The Presidential Library has devoted its new collection to St. Isaac's Cathedral

The Presidential Library’s portal presents a new "St. Isaac's Cathedral" electronic collection. It illustrates the architecture of the cathedral, the stages of its construction and financing including rare books, documents, maps, plans, photographs and postcards.

The Cathedral of St. Isaac of Dalmatia, better known as St. Isaac's Cathedral, is one of the main attractions of the Northern capital. Today it is the largest Orthodox church in the city and the state memorial museum.  

St. Isaac's Cathedral has its history since 1706, when Peter I ordered to build a church for the workers of the Admiralty shipyards and name it in honor of the saint, whose memory - May 30 - coincided with the birthday of the sovereign.

In 1717, the second stone church was laid in place of the dilapidated wooden church. The third cathedral was completed and consecrated in 1802, but it soon became apparent that this building also needed rebuilding. Therefore, in 1809, a competition was announced for the construction of a new, fourth temple, consecrated only in 1858...

The book of the priest of St. Isaac’s Cathedral V. I. Serafimov “The description of St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg according to official documents” (1903), available on the Presidential Library’s portal, details about all the stages of grandiose construction that lasted for a century and a half.

Interestingly, the church has changed its location more than once. The first was “on the Admiralty Meadow, fenced for grass, against the Admiralty Gate itself, against Gorokhovaya Street”, that is, on the territory of modern Alexander Garden. It was located in a one-story building of a former drawing barn. The Presidential Library’s collections provide a book by the architect of the fourth cathedral of Auguste Montferrand, where he writes about the reasons why after the decision of Peter I to build the first St. Isaac's Church, it was not one year before services began in it: “Numerous works undertaken by this Sovereign did not allow him immediately take up the execution of such an intention. He was content only with the appointment of the above-mentioned building to this church”.

However, the simplicity of the architecture of the first St. Isaac’s Church did not prevent the future Russian emperor Peter I in February 1712 from getting married to Catherine there.

The stone Isaac church, founded in 1717, “moved” closer to the Neva, to the place where the Bronze Horseman was later installed. This “version” of the building was severely damaged by soil sedimentation and a lightning strike in 1735. Therefore, the question about new construction arose.

The place for the third church was chosen during the reign of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna in 1761, but at the end of the same year she died, the work stopped and continued only seven years later, already under Catherine II. However, during the life of this empress, the cathedral designed by architect A. Rinaldi was not completed.  

“Dissatisfied with the slowness of construction and wanting to clean up the best part of the capital, cluttered with working materials, the new emperor Paul I instructed the architect V. Brenna to finish the work begun by Rinaldi in the shortest time possible. To do this, the size of the upper parts of the temple was reduced. Instead of five domes, only one was built. The construction material was changed to brick. In this form, the cathedral was rebuilt and consecrated in 1802 already under Emperor Alexander I”, - says the book of V. I. Serafimov, posted on the Presidential Library’s portal.

However, this third version of the temple did not fit into the picture of the parade center of the capital of the empire - “the incongruity and incoherence of parts of the former marble building with brick outfits according to a new plan, the disharmony of the church with its surrounding buildings were so obvious that it was necessary to completely rebuild it”.

In the reign of Emperor Alexander I, several competitions were held for the restructuring of St. Isaac's Cathedral. The winner eventually became the French architect Auguste Montferrand. “He presented the emperor 24 versions of the future structure in all well-known architectural styles, including Chinese and Indian”, - the radio program from the Our Geography series on Our Radio, placed in the electronic library of the Presidential Library, says.

But Emperor Alexander I chose the classic version. The year 1818 can be considered the beginning of the construction of the fourth St. Isaac's Cathedral.

By the way, one of the prerequisites for its construction was the preservation of part of the predecessor building, especially the altar. Therefore, strictly speaking, the last cathedral was not built from scratch.

A number of changes to the project, however non-radical, were made by the next emperor, Nicholas I. For example, the reval white stone was replaced by gray marble.

The long-awaited consecration of the temple fell on the rule of the son of Nicholas - Alexander II. It happened on May 30 (June 11 in the new style) of 1858, 40 years after the start of the last construction. A month later Montferrand died. Moreover, in St. Petersburg a rumor had long been heard that the architect did not specifically hurry to finish the construction, having received a grim prediction that he was destined to die as soon as the work on the cathedral would be completed... 

As for the process of building the cathedral directly, the Presidential Library’s portal provides access to such unique documents as “The Case Considering the Comments of the Architect K. Mauduit on the Project of St. Isaac’s Cathedral” (1820) or “The Case of the purchased granite from the St. Isaac’s Cathedral and the position of the case" (1829).

Information about the delivery of specific building materials to the site deserves special mention. “112 columns adorning St. Isaac’s Cathedral were mined, like other granite for him, in Finland. <...> The place called Puterlax, has a granite rock that extends over a fairly large space, partly in even horizontal layers of sagging, two or more wide, partly inclined in different directions in the area it occupies. This is the rock that was chosen to break columns from it onto the porticos of St. Isaac's Cathedral,”, - the book 1903 by V. I. Serafimov says..

It happened like this: “As soon as they found a place in shape and size suitable for business and, as far as possible by external review, they made sure that there were no cracks, veins and other defects, they determined the size required for the column and the lines cut down a path or a groove, bending it at the ends with a right angle towards the outer, vertically cleaned side of the rock. Vertical wells were drilled in this path. <...> Then, huge iron wedges were inserted into the drilled holes and workers were placed around them with heavy hammers. The workers hit the wedges at once, and after several blows the mass broke off in the direction of the drilled wells”.

The history of the financing of St. Isaac’s Cathedral before the revolution is reflected in the book The Special Capitals of the Most Holy Governing Synod (1914) and a number of other documents. We learn that the cathedral was built with the help of public-private capital. The Presidential Library’s collections contain digitized copies of the “About 8.810 rubles per year for the maintenance of St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg of September 13, 1908 and the Transfer of the management of buildings of St. Isaac’s Cathedral and the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Department of the Orthodox Confession of September 21, 1908.

We add that the temple was transferred several times to the jurisdiction of various ministries: means of communication and public buildings, internal affairs, then, remaining under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Interior in technical and artistic terms, the cathedral was transferred to the department of the Orthodox confession in relation to economics. From 1858 to 1929, the church was the cathedral of the St. Petersburg diocese.

After 1917, the church was nationalized. In 1928, the exhibition "History of the construction of St. Isaac's Cathedral", organized in the walls of the temple, laid the foundation for the museum. At one time it was called anti-religious, but then it was redeveloped into the historical-artistic one. During the war and blockade exhibits of other museums were kept here. After the war, a long restoration was carried out. Since 1990, religious services have again begun to be held in the cathedral.

You can trace how the cathedral and the space next to it have changed over the years, with the help of maps and plans, as well as photographs and postcards presented in the framework of  St. Isaac's Cathedral new collection.