Kennan Institute

Occasional Paper #285 St. Petersburg’s Courtyards and Washington’s Alleys: Officialdom’s Neglected Neighbors

Blair A. Ruble

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Blair A. Ruble

St. Petersburg’s Courtards and Washington’s Alleys: Officialdom’s Neglected Neighbors by Blair A. Ruble Two of the eighteenth century’s was a “City of Magnificent Intentions” most ambitious city planning projects— with “broad avenues that begin in St. Petersburg, Russia and Washington, nothing and lead nowhere.”3 But these D.C.—remained mired in noxious criticisms took back seats to visual swamps for decades. Slowly and steadily, propaganda revealing just how beautiful both cities began to take on the outward both towns had become. Such images appearance of their founders’ dreams. always seemed to be set in good weather, Long avenues cut across forbidding a rather remarkable occurrence given the marshlands, paving of sorts was set down, truly inhumane climates of both capitals. columned buildings that would have They were proof that politicians can done honor to the gods appeared. All of build cities. Alas, they also revealed the this was capped by enormous iron- limitations of the aptitude of both domes—the second to be completed, Imperial autocracy and citizen democ- the United States Capitol, having been racy for creating vibrant and viable urban modeled after the first, St. Isaac’s cathe- communities. dral.1 By the beginning of the twentieth Real life played hide-and-seek century, St. Petersburg and Washington with dreams of grandeur along both stood as proof that government spending capitals’ grand boulevards. Long straight could, in fact, construct major interna- lines and decorous facades concealed a tional capitals where no private assembly second life in both towns. Hidden just of healthy-minded citizens would have out of view dwelled hundreds of souls dared. whose presence would have brought St. Petersburg and Washington ruin to any proper dinner party. Close donned their best architectural clothing enough to provide a ready supply of all just as engravings turned to photographs. the servants the households of The beauty of the two cities filled the officialdom might need, the less worthy lenses of new-fangled Kodaks, catching nonetheless were removed from sight. A the shadows of long, straight, low, and starkly different world awaited those wide avenues with important-looking who were adventurous enough to open a personages dashing by. Both cities also Petersburg courtyard gate, or turn down earned the scorn of eminent critics. a Washington back alley. Fyodor Dostoyevsky observed that inhabitants of the Imperial capital had I. AN IMPERIAL VISION the misfortune of living in “the most abstract and premeditated city in the Peter (I) the Great (1682-1725) whole world.”2 Charles Dickens mut- founded St. Petersburg in 1703 on the tered his infamous line that Washington marshy frontier of two competing This paper was originally presented as a lecture as part of the “The Third Debate: Real City, Ideal City,” convened by the Centre de Culture Contemporánia de Barcelona in October 1997, and was published in the conference proceedings which appeared a year later [Pep Subirós, editor, Ciutat real, ciutat ideal. Significat i funció a l’espai urbá modern (Barcelona: CCCB, 1998), pp. 11-27]. A Russian translation of the article by Vyachislav Glazychev under the editorship of Grigorii Kaganov has appeared in Real’nost’ i Sub”ekt (St. Petersburg), Vol. 6, No. 2 (2000), pp. 56-64; and Vestnik Instituta Kennana v Rossii (), vyp. 2 (2002), pp. 53-66. empires (those of Peter’s Russia and the city’s distinctive triradial street system Sweden of Charles XII).4 The area’s centering on the Admiralty spire strategic importance in this imperial emerged during Anna’s rule, while competition demanded fortification.5 Elizabeth launched an impressive net- Glaciers had long before carved out 100 work of imperial parks and satellite lakes and ponds, 66 rivers, and 101 palaces and towns. By the time that islands, while the Neva river delta Elizabeth’s nephew’s wive, Catherine (II) produced flat marshlands, which, though the Great (1762-1796), had seized power covered with scant vegetation, were in a palace coup, the city already had nonetheless subject to frequent flood- developed a distinctive urban culture; ing.6 The construction of a world-class one that was permeated by European metropolis on such a site demanded ideas despite its overwhelmingly Russian perseverance and obstinacy as well as the flavor.11 iron-willed determination of an autocrat. St. Petersburg grew into a great No Neva delta settlement could ever European capital during the reigns of become a “natural” extension of its Catherine the Great and her grandsons environment. Alexander I (1801-1825) and Nicholas I Peter conceived a well-ordered (1825-1855). The city’s center emerged and regular brick town, similar to the as one of the world’s leading ensembles Dutch cities he had seen during his of neoclassical architecture, and the famous excursion through Western population, more than quadrupled as Europe.7 The Emperor, his governor migrants began to arrive from the Prince Menshikov, and his architect, countryside.12 Frenchman Jean Baptiste Alexandre Le Catherine the Great and her Blond, initially focused their efforts on progeny expressed their pretensions to the Vasili Island.8 Their overtly geomet- European power through a neoclassicism ric plan for the island featured a number then popular in France. The result was of streets and canals intersecting at right nearly a century of neoclassical construc- angles, dividing the city into strictly tion as extensive as any similar project organized functional zones. Strains on the elsewhere in the world. The Catherinian state budget—and the hazards of travel achievement paved the way for the apex to the island across treacherous cur- of Russian neoclassical architecture and rents—doomed these early designs to urban design under Alexander I.13 Large failure.9 scale building efforts were not always Following the reigns of Peter and practical, so that only a limited number later his widow, Catherine I (1725- of monumental structures could actually 1727), St. Petersburg embarked upon a be built. More vigorous buildings were stormy half-century that witnessed the placed for maximum effect at critical capital’s return to Moscow under Peter’s junctions, with secondary spaces left for grandson Peter II (1727-1730); its later generations to confront. restoration to Petersburg by Peter’s niece, The immediate task of finishing Anna (1730-1740); and its embellish- Catherine the Great’s classical master- ment during a brilliant explosion of piece fell to her son, Paul I (1796-1801), Russian rococo under Peter the Great’s and her grandsons, Alexander I and daughter, Elizabeth (1741-1762).10 The Nicholas I.14 The construction of several central squares surrounding the Admi- mocratizing pause in the otherwise ralty district and the beautification of the overly official Imperial capital. city’s main avenue—the Nevskii Political democracy was never a Prospekt—marked the culmination of feature of the Petersburg yard. St. Peters- planning efforts of the Alexandrian burg native and poet Anatolii Naiman epoch. St. Petersburg was transformed recently observed that Peter not only under Alexander I and Nicholas I into a built this “severe, shapely city,” but also grand spatial composition of seemingly severely regulated the life of its citi- unbroken chains of related ensembles. zens.18 Authoritarian control began in Their capital’s omnipresent order soon the dvor, which was often presided over faded under the press of industrialization. by the dvornik—a Russian-style con- St. Petersburg had become the most cierge who reported more frequently to expensive and least healthful capital in all the secret police than to the landlord. of Europe by the beginning of the American traveler A. S. twentieth century.15 It had become Rappoport wrote of the dvornik in his Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s hometown. account of what may have been Russia’s last “normal” year of the twentieth II. ST. PETERSBURG COURT- century, 1913. “If every house has its YARDS court or dvor,” Rappoport informed his readers, “every dvor has its dvornik. The “With a sinking heart and a latter can scarcely be called a porter, as nervous tremor, he [the murderous his duties are too numerous. He does all Raskolnikov—B.R.] went up to a huge the heavy housework, sweeps the court, house which on one side looked onto and fetches water from the public the canal, and on the other into the fountains... Over these manifold duties street. This house was let out in tiny he is also a police agent. He is the official tenements and was inhabited by work- intermediary between the tenants and ing people of all kinds—tailors, lock- the police authorities: the post is no smiths, cooks, Germans of sorts, girls sinecure in suspicious Russia, where picking up a living as best they could, every respectable citizen has his descrip- petty clerks, etc. There was a continual tion at the police station.”19 For much of coming and going through the two gates the city’s life, the dvornik thus held both and in the two courtyards of the building and community together, house.”16 providing much needed minor services Welcome to the Petersburg dvor, for a bottle of vodka (or two or three). the enclosed courtyard. The dvor holds a The outward clutter of the special place in Russian life, originating courtyard brought various social groups with the farmyards of the village. A dashing together. Urban geographer fundamental unit of Moscow life, the James Bater argues in St. Petersburg. courtyard took on heightened cultural Industrialization and Change—his classic meaning in westernized and alienating study of the industrializing Imperial St. Petersburg.17 It became the space into capital—that the city’s pattern of social which Russia could intrude on an segregation was three-dimensional.20 otherwise overly rational and geometric Building on Johann Georg Kohl’s obser- cityscape. The yard was the great de- vations from the 1840s, Bater maintains that Petersburg’s poor often lived in the III. A SYMBOL FOR THE NATION cellars and garrets of the very same buildings of which the more desirable As had been the case with St. floors were occupied by more prosper- Petersburg, the site of Washington, D.C. ous citizens.21 This configuration sur- had been chosen for strategic purpose vived until the eve of the Revolutions of rather than for congeniality. The motives 1917, a period of excruciatingly slow in this instance were political rather than improvements in public transportation, military. Several states within the young and the arrival of tens of thousands of American Republic had been sparring peasants throughout the decades follow- for years to secure the new capital city as ing the Emancipation of 1861. their own, with major regional divisions Petersburgers were living quite literally emerging between Northern and South- on top of one another, with more than ern political factions over this, and many seven inhabitants registered in 1910 for other issues such as slavery. George each Petersburg apartment.22 Different Washington moved in 1790 to have a worlds challenged one another every new Federal District governed by time neighbors went through the yard to Congress carved out of several farms exit their buildings and enter the street. along the Potomac River near his Dostoyevsky, not surprisingly, hometown of Alexandria, Virginia. The became an afficiando of the dvor, for it original 100 square mile enclave— was the perfect home for the misfits and which included the tobacco ports of depraved souls so central to his Alexandria and Georgetown, Mary- storytelling. “On the right hand,” he land—was thought to symbolize the wrote of the hiding place for merging of sectional interests within a Raskolnikov’s axe, “the blank unwashed new federal government.24 wall of a four-storied house stretched far Washington hired an irascible into the court; on the left, a wooden and impetuous French engineer Pierre hoarding ran parallel with it for twenty L’Enfant to set down a street plan for the paces into the court, and new city. His congenial mix of grids and then turned sharply to the left. Here was diagonal avenues, circles and squares a deserted fenced-off place where marked a final achievement of baroque rubbish of different sorts was lying. At planning principles. His sketches and the end of the court, the corner of a low, maps more than a little resembled those smutty, stone shed, apparently part of of Versailles. There would be no mistak- some workshop, peeped from behind the ing L’Enfant’s village for the French royal hoarding. It was probably a carriage- retreat, however, when the government builder’s or carpenter’s shed; the whole finally moved from to their place from the entrance was black with new home in 1800. coal-dust.”23 The world of the dvor could Aside from a scattering of grand be far removed the aristocratic facades buildings—the Capitol, Presidential that turned toward grand streets and Executive Mansion, Treasury Building, boulevards. Here was real life, Russian and Patent Office—Washington re- style. mained a melancholy infested swamp for many years. American life was hardly disrupted when British marines burned the town in October 1814 (except, century, Gilded Age leaders declared that perhaps, for that of the poor President the capital must be beautified so that it and his family who had been forced to could be worthy of its status as the seat flee town). Cows wallowed in marshes of American power. out the White House’s back door. Federal ’s 1893 World’s investment remained sporadic, while Columbian Exposition had set a new Congress finally enacted the first in a standard for American thinking about long-string of unworkable municipal cities.27 A grand world’s fair to com- charters only in 1820. The local memorate the four hundredth anniver- economy was so insipid that residents of sary of Columbus’s arrival in America, Alexandria successfully secured retroces- the Exposition’s architects—a commis- sion back to Virginia in 1846. It was only sion of the nation’s leading designers of the Civil War (1861-1864) that changed the period—and entrepreneurial spon- the city’s future, launching Washington sors favored the principles taught at the on the road to great city status. Ecole des Beaux Arts in . Their Washington benefitted from the glistening white, orderly neoclassical fair War both directly and indirectly. The site captured the American imagina- city served as capital of a state that was tion—for good or for ill—for a genera- expanding to meet the challenges of tion. Efforts to replicate this famous brutal warfare.25 Troops of all ranks, arms “White City” sprang up across the dealers, and camp hangers-on flooded United States—with many a municipal- the town. The city was a front line post, ity building a new town center or city sitting literally on the border with the hall. “City Beautiful” proponents had secessionists to the South. It served as a their greatest impact on the nation’s major mobilization center for the war capital, where planners’ visions were effort. Infrastructure expanded, with new joined for the first time with the power rail lines being built quickly to supply of the State. The Washington, DC of the city. Finally, Washington was the today is as much a product of turn-of- solemn site of Abraham Lincoln’s mar- the-last-century architects’ beautification tyrdom in the months following the War. dreams as contemporary St. Petersburg is Numerous proposals to shift the capital of Catherine the Great’s grand buildings westward with the American population and ensembles. now fell by-the-wayside. By 1900, the American Institute Washington had become the of Architects were joined by Senator capital of a dynamic and victorious James McMillan and the Senate Park nation believing continental conquest to Commission in sponsoring the first be its “Manifest Destiny.”26 The national major comprehensive plan for the economy(and the national government) nation’s capital since that of Pierre continued to expand. More and more L’Enfant.28 Drawing explicitly on the money flowed into Washington with that design principles of the Chicago Exposi- growth. The capital hosted American tion and the City Beautiful Movement, “High Society” during the proper Commissioners traveled about Europe “Season,” foreign embassies lent a touch and North America looking for fresh of exoticism to the town, and the city ideas. Chicagoans Henry Ives Cobb and boomed. By the end of the nineteenth Daniel Burnham lent their personal connection to the 1893 White City, life often humanized and domesticated while other prominent Commission the city. As historian James Borchert participants, such as Frederick Law observes, “most conflicts and differences Olmsted, Jr. and Charles McKim, had were moderated and controlled by the similarly worked on both projects. The tight network of primary relations and 1902 Commission Report proclaimed a social organization, the common alley grand monumental urban core focused world view, the need to cooperate in around a series of monuments along the order to survive, and the constant danger great Mall space stretching from the of the world outside the alley. Capitol to the Potomac. Unbecoming Washington’s alley dwellers did not and unsightly activities—such as markets demonstrate the social disintegration and and rail stations—were removed from pathology that had been predicted by view. Much of the plan would be social theorists and described by stu- achieved, with the vicissitudes of two dents of alley life... Intolerable conditions World Wars and the Great Depression do not necessarily lead to dehumaniza- requiring adjustments from time to time. tion.”29 The Mall became the genuine “Symbol As in St. Petersburg, back corners for the Nation” that George Washington, were the abode of rural folk recently Thomas Jefferson, Pierre L’Enfant, and so liberated from bondage, former slaves many others had been seeking for over a and their descendants rather than serfs. century. The alley was the place where Washing- The McMillan Plan ended ton remained its most Southern. where the real city began. The Commis- Rural African-Americans beat a sioners set out a vision for a symbolic path to the nation’s capital for the same monumental core, a neoclassical pan- reasons that poor farm folk have been theon to American greatness. As already coming to town for centuries. No matter noted, many of their goals were realized– how difficult life proved to be in though a few odd lapses, such as the Washington’s alleyways, it was better survival of the Smithsonian Institution’s than what the cotton and peanut farms Castle Building, persist to this day. The and small towns of the South had to Commissioners created the Washington offer. Marie Delaveaux Wilson, a proud of diplomats and tourists, lobbyists and old woman created by short-story writer Congress people. They hardly touched Edward P. Jones, explained what it was the real city that had grown up just a few all about in his tale “Marie.” “My mother yards away in the city’s back streets and had this idea,” Marie revealed about her alleys. departure for the city not long after the beginning of the twentieth century, “that IV. WASHINGTON ALLEYS everything could be done in Washington, that a human being could take all they Washington alleys brought the troubles to Washington and things would life of the country to the town (in this be set right. I think that was all wrapped case the rural back roads of a vanquished up with her notion of the government, American South.) Despite the alleys’ the Supreme Court, and the president capacity to sometimes shock the Wash- and the like.”30 ington bourgeoisie, their touch of rustic The Federal presence made Washington a relatively attractive desti- One group of concerned Wash- nation for former slaves, their children, ingtonians, the Monday Evening Club, and their grandchildren after 1865. The estimated in 1912 that 240 blocks of city offered a variety of jobs in what inhabited alleys could be found in the would today be known as “the service city. 16,000 residents lived in 3,201 alley sectors” (and, eventually, in government houses, nearly all of them built prior to offices) that were sometimes unavailable 1892.37 The greater mobility provided to American blacks elsewhere. Nestled by the automobile broke down the in a region long home to slave-holders, social patterns that had sustained alley Washington claimed a large and vibrant life. Washingtonians increasingly used African-American community almost their new freedom to travel to segregate 31 from the city’s founding. Over ten themselves by race and by class. Borchert thousand Freemen lived in the Federal reports that “although the number of District at the time of the Civil War houses decreased by nearly 40 percent (1861-1865), and some 190,000 at the by 1927, 1,346 alley dwellings remained 32 turn of the century. Nearly 300,000 occupied in Northwest and Southwest African-Americans lived in Washington a alone.”38 These homes became targets half century later, a number that would for the Alley Dwelling Authority estab- 33 grow to over a half-million by 1970. lished in 1934 by the United States Back alleys were one of the places in Congress “to provide for the discontinu- which blacks could gain a hold on urban ance of the use as dwellings of the 34 life. buildings situated in alleys in the District Borchert tells us further that of Columbia.”39 turn-of-the-century reformers com- The informal social world of the plained about hidden communities alley sheltered its residents from the which, nestled away in unobtrusive humiliations and hardships of the alleys, were viewed by the middle class wealthier world beyond. Alley commu- as nourishing immorality, crime, and nities were rich in what social scientists 35 disease. Inadequate public transporta- now call “social capital,” that dense tion—as in St. Petersburg—forced network of contacts which supports Washingtonians to live within walking- community members. The alley was a distance of jobs and stores. Rising real play area for children, an outdoor laundry estate prices, meanwhile, encouraged for women, a refuge for men, and a construction on the back lots of grand conversation picture for all.40 Only a townhouses along central streets and handful of adult male alley dwellers held avenues. This arrangement proved skilled or white collar jobs, while nearly advantageous for all involved. The all employed alley women worked as wealthy gained income from the back- maids, cooks, and servants.41 Residents alley homes while their servants re- drifted in and out of the alley every day, mained close to their jobs. The result was much as they might in the country. The a higher degree of spatial integration by world of the Washington alley, like that class, race, and ethnic group than is of the St. Petersburg courtyard, sustained common in present-day American its residents. cities.36 V. ST. PETERSBURG’S PLURAL privatized, renovated, and frequently ATMOSPHERES turned to commercial use on a piece- meal basis. Englishman Duncan Fallowell We must be careful not to captured the spirit of Petersburg’s post- romanticize life in urban civilization’s Soviet atmosphere in his account of a back corners. Dostoyevsky wrote, summer in the city. “And the atmo- “There are few places where there are so sphere is extraordinary,” Fallowell wrote many gloomy, strong, and queer influ- in the early 1990s. “Atmospheres plural. ences on the soul of man as in Peters- One detects several, interlaced or op- burg.”42 Courtyards and alleys were posed, generating an eerie momentous- hardly addresses of choice. Those forced ness: everything acquires a significance to reside in a lane, an alley, or a yard lived beyond the immediate.”45 Over a mil- a tough life. lion square meters of interior space in After the Bolshevik Revolution, central Petersburg buildings require St. Petersburg became Leningrad and the renovation—a daunting task that threat- yard overtook the palace. Civil war, mass ens to swallow-up available capital in-migration, the destructive impact of reserves for a generation to come. “City one of history’s longest military block- of 100,000 courtyards, none of them ades, and Stalin’s retrograde housing pretty,” Fallowell accurately declares.46 policies delayed the large-scale construc- We can not yet know which of his tion of new residential areas in Leningrad interlaced atmospheres will predominate until the early 1960s.43 By the time in the old Northern Capital in the years Leningrad became St. Petersburg once to come. again, the city could claim a higher percentage of residents living in multi- VI. TEAR IT DOWN! family “communal” apartments than any other major Soviet city.44 Nearly a Twentieth-century development quarter of the metropolitan population in Washington has proven more varied. inhabited shared, multi-household Some poor neighborhoods—such as apartments in older buildings downtown. Southwest D.C.—have been bulldozed Sixteen percent of the local housing to fulfill the dreams of government stock had been constructed prior to the planners and overzealous activists. Other Bolshevik Revolution, often the very areas—such as the Shaw district in same buildings that dominate Fyodor Northwest—have fought back gamely Dostoyevsky’s dark universe. By the against degradation in spite of over- mid-1980s, St. Petersburg’s nineteenth whelming obstacles. Still others—such as century cityscape had become home the West End—have been gentrified, primarily to the old (pensioners), the with not-so-rich young professionals young (students), and outcasts of every (the genuinely wealthy preferring age. suburban mini-mansions instead) com- More recent trends following the ing to live in the same back streets as collapse of the Soviet Union point African-American rural migrants two toward a slow and difficult transition generations before. Only now, some of back to the chateau world of bourgeois those back streets are chic addresses. Petersburg. Older buildings are being Today’s Southwest D.C. is the sort of urban neighborhood that Soviet moderate-income... More than a third of planners tried to build but could never the displaced population found alterna- quite realize. Knock-off Corbusierian tive homes in public housing, much of it towers are scattered about without just outside the redeveloped area. An- reference to traditional street plans. It is other 2,000 families moved into private the city that government planners and rental units, and only 391 purchased local editorial writers wanted, with no private homes, all in other parts of the alley life left to upset the tourists as they city.”49 Today, once sleek buildings— whiz-by on the Southeast-Southwest now weary in the way that only two- Freeway. decade-old cement can become—stand Led by the clarion voice of The in a district seemingly devoid of mean- Washington Post, social reformers and city ingful human presence. planners attacked the old alley neighbor- Crosstown, residents of the hoods of Southwest Washington inner-city Shaw neighborhood just throughout the 1950s. “No doubt many north of downtown were not about to residents of the area will be loath to lose let their homes be sacrificed so that their homes despite the prevailing slum Washington could become more pleas- conditions,” The Post’s learned editors ant for upper-class whites. Led by the observed. “They should realize, however, Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy, a native of Shaw that the net effect of this great redevel- who had gone on to Yale Divinity opment effort will be to make Washing- School, 150 community organizations ton a much more pleasant place in and civic groups organized the Model which to live and work.”47 Inner City Community Development Government-driven city build- Organization (MICCO) in 1966. ing once again privileged decorum over MICCO activists worked to stabilize the city’s indigent. 1960s-era demolition and upgrade their neighborhood without crews quickly leveled a 113-block area the displacement of current residents about a quarter mile from the United dents and businesses.50 States Capitol, displacing 22,539 resi- Shaw—which was never an dents, eighty percent of whom were “alley neighborhood” but had become African-Americans. The project— home to many African-Americans funded by the Federal Government and nonetheless—remains a troubled district carried out with the participation of today, one that is perpetually on the major private developers and designers verge of a better life. MICCO’s efforts of the era—such as New builder helped the neighborhood survive as well William Zeckendorf and architect I. M. as it has. Parts of Shaw destroyed in the Pei—required twenty-five years to 1968 riots following the assassination of complete.48 Official Washington now Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have yet to be extended its reach deep into the city’s rebuilt. Drug traders have ravaged part of Southwest quadrant. the neighborhood in more recent years. Historian Howard Gillette, Jr. A vital community nonetheless remains. reports that “ninety-nine percent of the Unlike old Southwest D.C., the patient buildings in the Southwest were torn lives to fight another day. down. Of the 5,900 new units con- Northwest Washington’s West structed, only 310 could be classified as End neighborhood followed a third evolutionary trajectory for central DC. Today, Washington’s West End The entire area of Washington tradition- neighborhood is a visible reminder of ally known as the “West End” has the truism expressed by Spiro Kostof become increasingly merged in the that the unique characteristics of streets popular mind with “Dupont Circle” and neighborhoods are derived from thanks to a metro station of that name. “the urban process.”51 In other words, This area is among those D.C. neighbor- social, political, technical, and artistic hoods to have emerged full-blown in the forces combine to shape the city and the boom years that followed the American neighborhood: it is impossible to talk Civil War (1861-1864). A once ne- about one dimension without running glected no-person’s zone between smack into another. The physical envi- Washington City and the trading port of ronment surrounding Ward Place has Georgetown, the neighborhood took changed a great deal, but the urban shape when Gilded Age real estate process has distinct similarities with the developers tossed up block after block of past. grand three-and-four-story brick row houses in the ornate Victorian style. VII. THE EMBOURGEOISMENT Interspersed among the proper bour- OF NEWPORT PLACE geois streets, which are identified by numbers and letters (e.g., 19th Street, The West End fell on hard times 20th Street, 21st Street, M Street, N with the arrival of the automobile, Street, O Street), were small “courts,” which carried all those proper bourgeois “ways,” “places,” and “alleys” inhabited families in the big houses along the by the descendants of African slaves now letters and numbers out to the suburbs. emancipated by four years of bloody African-Americans moved from the internecine warfare. Duke Ellington— back alleyways into the larger houses, perhaps the twentieth century’s greatest which were broken up by absentee American musician—was born in 1899 landlords into roomming and apartment in a small house on one such tiny street, houses. The area’s architectural grandeur Ward Place. was rediscovered in the 1970s by those Much has changed over the past with some money—primarily whites— century, of course. Ten story glass- and a slow but steady process of sheathed office buildings now spread to “gentrification” began. the south and east of the spot where About three decades ago, a Ellington’s childhood home once stood. certain Carlos, an Hispanic real estate These modern buildings are filled to the salesman, moved into a small house on brim with lawyers, accountants, and Newport Place—like nearby Ward Place, lobbyists. The actual site of Ellington’s Sunderland Place, Hopkins Street, and birthplace is a large office block—one Riggs Place, a small street once reserved serving as home to a regional substation for the black servant class. All the neigh- of the United States Postal Service. bors came out to help him move in—as Perhaps fittingly, the Postal Service’s was the practice in Washington’s poor, employees are predominantly African- black neighborhoods. After helping American. They deliver the mail to the Carlos move his couch into the house, a surrounding white professionals. man as large as a refrigerator surveyed Carlos’s pale skin and proclaimed in a judgment on the work of George bellowing voice to his neighbors a Washington’s French and African- favorite phrase of White America, “Well,” American surveyors as well as on Peter he cried, “there goes the neighborhood!” the Great’s and Catherine the Great’s He was right. Within a decade, the only Italian masters. Monumental St. Peters- African-Americans remaining in Carlos’s burg and Washington are great achieve- neighborhood were a scattering of ments of human will over nature. families who had managed to purchase One need only stroll across their own homes when the neighbor- Washington’s central Mall on a June hood was still declasse. evening to appreciate the democratic Washington’s West End is no prescience of the city’s founders. The longer poor. Like Carlos’s former neigh- great parade grounds—defined by bor, many people have been hurt in this generations of planners and architects transition to greater wealth. over the years—has become America’s Gentrification and privatization are not backyard. Tourists and office workers housing policies in and of themselves; mingle, tossing frisbees, playing softball, they are at best only single components eating an early picnic dinner on the of such a policy. Real estate profit Mall’s resiliently lush grass. Fat squirrels maximization is not urban policy, but frolic under robust trees. Memorials to one dimension among many within a the nation’s heroes mix with the gentle comprehensive approach toward urban pleasures of Americans at play. Great ills. museums—in an eclectic gathering of The evolution of Washington’s styles from the neoromanesque West End neighborhood—together with Smithsonian Castle to the neoclassical that of St. Petersburg’s courtyards— National Gallery of Art, from the neo- demonstrates the complexity of urban airplane-hanger style of the National Air experience. Emperors, politicians, plan- & Space Museum to a huge cement ners, and real estate developers dislike doughnut containing Mr. Hirshhorn’s such complexity. Urban life has a way of fine collection of modern and contem- obstructing their grand plans. Policies porary art—define a public space that is, and approaches to the city that are not at one and the same time, domestic and predicated on process, but focus instead grand. The twinkling lights of the on result—on architectural style, tempo- Capitol Building’s sweeping terraces add rary real estate prices, the color or a touch of even as a brash carrou- nationality of a neighborhood’s resi- sel brings Luna Park to mind. Poignant dents—ultimately fail to advance reminders of war dead and assassinated anyone’s interests. Urban life is continu- presidents convey solemnity. ing process rather than finite results. Washington’s Mall has evolved over the decades to capture all that is right about VIII. LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE the United States. It may just be the one place where the country’s diversity St. Petersburg and the District of melds in languid summer warmth. Columbia are now coming to the close St. Petersburg on a white night of the third and second centuries of their evening in June similarly inspires, though existences. History has rendered its for different reasons. The baroque and neoclassical facades of Peter the Great’s have done the job had they ever been and Catherine the Great’s talented achieved. Planners and bureaucrats had architects bespeak an age that is long no such self-restraint when approaching past. Detached from their imperial the St. Petersburg and the Washington of purpose, the grand palaces and ministries the less than-well-to-do. Alleviation of and military headquarters that form social ills from above—either by the Petersburg’s monumental core now paternalistic Soviet totalitarian state or appear homey in comparison to so much by a less terrifying but ever bureaucratic that followed in the wake of 1917. American welfare state—often destroyed Families and tourists mix, munching on the best single asset both yards and alleys ice cream cones; clusters of slightly had to offer, “social capital.” Both cities inebriated youths play out their latest now provide powerful testimony that mating rituals; pick-up bands perform urban health often rests on the state of and even a poet or two or three may be the most meager section of town, rather heard to shout. A muted northern light than on the most handsome. magically transforms St. Petersburg into Contemporary and historic St. the city of its past. To walk along a Petersburg and Washington teach impor- Petersburg canal in June is to be lost in tant lessons about the urban future. any century but our own. The beauty of Beautiful buildings age, but never pall. the shadows cast in century-old photo- Grand urban spaces continue to inspire, graphs remains. As in Washington, grand even as the users are transformed by Petersburg still inspires. Monumental St. history’s vicissitudes. Catherinian ruffled Petersburg and Washington represent the courtiers, Stalin-era cloth-capped prole- best of planned urban space. tarians, and the gold-encrusted post- St. Petersburg and Washington Soviet newly rich all have enjoyed are also quickly becoming symbols of Peter’s magnificent gift. Lincolnian urban pathology. Spiralling homicide soldiers, New Deal social reformers, and rates, shattered families, disintegrating New Age dreamers all have discovered a streets, broken transportation systems, new Washington to make their own. ever-more-visible homelessness, eco- Most significantly, St. Petersburg nomic decline... These cities’ reputations and Washington demonstrate that cities for decay are as fully justified as that of must nurture the space that their most their summer sorcery. Twenty-first destitute residents call their own. Beauty century St. Petersburg and Washington may be found in remote landscapes and confront a lengthy list of city ills not grounds. The social capital earned in the because of a lost urban vision. Imperial refuge of the courtyard and the alley, the St. Petersburg and “capital” Washington forced intercourse of social diversity, and have persevered. Courtyard and alley life the sudden mix of disparate fates that have not fared as well. mark the lives of great cities can not be High-minded urban reformers replaced easily. and Communist revolutionaries could St. Petersburg and Washington not quite bring themselves to destroy are dream cities. They hover before our the precious beauty of official St. Peters- eyes as chimeras of unblemished urban burg and Washington—although various life. That initial image is no more real proposals over the past decades could than any other phantasm. Both still rank among the world’s great cities not because of dunce-capped monuments and straight facades. Rather, their court- yards and alleys have made them un- common. We must remain mindful of these cities’ powerful lessons as we begin the twenty-first century. Study St. Petersburg and Wash- ington well. Breath in their magnifi- cence. Find a dvor or an alley. ENDNOTES

1 THE JUNIOR LEAGUE OF 1703-1903, St. Petersburg 1903, pp. VII- WASHINGTON (Froncek, Thomas, IX; GRABAR’ I., Russkoi arkhitekture, ed.), The City of Washington: An Illustrated Nauka, Moscow 1969, pp. 264-283; History, Wings Books, Ravenel (New IOGANSEN, M.V., LISOVSKII, V. G . Jersey) 1992, p. 185. and NIKULINA, N.I., Arkhitektura 2 DOSTOYEVSKY, Fyodor, “Notes Vasil’evskogo ostrova v proshlom, from the Underground” (translated by nastoiashchem i budushchem, Akademiia David Magarshack), in Great Short Works khudozhestv SSSR, Leningrad 1969, pp. of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Perennial Library, 4-7. Harper & Row Publishers, New York 10 BRUMFIELD, William, Gold in 1968, pp. 261-379: 266. Azure, pp. 251-312; and 3 As quoted in MCLAUGHLIN OVSIANNIKOV, Iurii, Velikie zodchie GREEN, Constance, Washington: Village Sankt Peterburga; Trezini, Rastrelli, Rossi, and Capital, 1800-1878, Princeton Iskusstvo SPB, St. Petersburg 1996. University Press, Princeton 1962, pp. 11 HEARD HAMILTON, George, The 172-173. Art and Architecture of Russia, p. 217. 4 The city has been known as St. Peters- 12 BOZHERIANOV, I.N. Kul’turno- burg (1703-1914), Petrograd (1914- istoricheskii ocherki zhizni S-Peterburga za 1924), Leningrad (1924-1991), and St. dva veka, XVIII-XIX; EGOROV, Iu. A., Petersburg once again (1991-present). The Architectural Planning of St. Petersburg. 5 Located at 59 degrees, 57 minutes 13 EGOROV, Iu. A., The Architectural north latitude, St. Petersburg is the Planning of St. Petersburg. world’s most northerly million-plus 14 HEARD HAMILTON, George, The population center (its North American Art and Architecture of Russia, p. 217. counterpart at 61 degrees, 13 minutes 15 BATER, James, “The Legacy of north latitude being Anchorage, Alaska). Autocracy: Environmental Quality in St. 6 KHOMUTETSKII, N.F., Peterburg- Petersburg” in FRENCH, R. A. and Leningrad, Lenizdat, Leningrad 1958, p. HAMILTON, F.E. Ian (eds.), The Socialist 9. City: Spatial Structure and Urban Policy, 7 HEARD HAMILTON, George, The John Wiley & Sons, New York 1979, pp. Art and Architecture of Russia, Penguin 23-48. Books, Baltimore, 1975, pp. 180-182; 16 DOSTOYEVSKY, Fyodor, Crime and CRAFT BRUMFIELD, William, Gold Punishment (translated by Constance in Azur: One Thousand Years of Russian Garnett), Bantam Books, New York Architecture, David R. Godine, 1981, pp. 3-4. 1983, pp. 227-333. 17 For an engaging description of the 8 EGOROV, Iu. A., The Architectural MOSCOW dvor, see BENJAMIN, Planning of St. Petersburg (translated by Walter (SMITH, Gary, ed.) Moscow Diary Eric Dlubosch), Ohio University Press, (translated by Richard Sieburth), 1969, pp. 18-20; Harvard University Press, Cambridge BOZHERIANOV, I.N. Kul’turno- 1986, pp.67-68. istoricheskii ocherki zhizni 18 NAIMAN, Anatolii, “Russkaia poema: 9 S-Peterburga za dva veka XVII-XIX, chetyre opyta”, Oktiabr, No. 8 (1996), pp. 128-135: 131. University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1980, 19 RAPPAPORT, A.S., Home Life in pp. 222-223. Russia, The MacMillan Company, New 30 JONES, Edward P., “Marie,” in York 1913, p. 177. JONES, Edward P., Lost in the City, 20 BATER, James H., St. Petersburg. Perennial, New York 1992, pp. 235-250: Industrialization and Change, McGill- 247. Queen’s University Press, 31 HORTON, James Oliver, “The 1976. Genesis of Washington’s African Ameri- 21 KOHL, J.G. Der Verkehr und die can Community,” in CURRO CARY, Ansiedlung der Menschen in ihrer Francine (ed.), Urban Odyssey: A Abhangigkeit von der Gestaltung der Multicultural History of Washington, Erdoberflache, 1841. This work is D.C., Smithsonian Press, Washington also discussed in PEUCKER, Thomas 1996, pp. 20-41 K., “Johann Georg Kohl, a Theoretical 32 GILETTE, Jr. Howard, Between Justice Geographer in the Nineteenth Century,” and Beauty: Race, Planning and the Failure Professional Geographer, vol. XX, No. 4 of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C., p. 28; (1968), pp. 247-250. LESSOFF, Alan, The Nation and Its City: 22 BATER, James H., St. Petersburg: Politics, “Corruption,” and Progress in Industrialization and Change, p. 239. Washington, D.C., 1861-1902, The Johns 23 DOSTOYEVSKY, Fyodor, Crime and Hopkins University Press, Baltimore Punishment, p. 96. 1994, p. 18. 24 This account of Washington’s initial 33 GILETTE, Jr. Howard, Between Justice years is based largely on GILETTE, Jr. and Beauty, p. 153. Howard, Between Justice and Beauty. 34 For a discussion of Washington alleys Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban as places to live, see BORCHERT, Policy in Washington, D.C., The Johns James, Alley Life in Washington. Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 35 Ibid., p. 2. 1995, pp. 5-26. 36 Ibid., pp. 14-15. 25 Ibid., pp.26-48. 37 Ibid., p. 45. 26 Ibid., pp.49-87 38 Ibid., p. 52 27 A readable account of the impact of 39 Ibid. the World’s Columbian Exposition’s 40 Ibid., p. 117. White City–and the subsequent City 41 Ibid., p. 169. Beautiful Movement–on the American 42 DOSTOYEVSKY, Fyodor, Crime and cityscape may be found in GILBERT, Punishment, p. 402 James, Perfect Cities: Chicago’s Utopia’s of 43 For an overview of Soviet-era 1893, University of Chicago Press, Leningrad development–including Chicago 1991. housing policies, see RUBLE, Blair A., 28 GILETTE, Jr. Howard, Between Justice Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City, Univer- and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure sity of California Press, Berkeley 1990. of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C., pp. 44 KADIBUR, T.S., “Zhilishchnye 88-108. usloviia naseleniia Sankt-Peterburga,” in 29 BORCHERT, James, Alley Life in POLESHCHUK, E.A. and MAKOSII, Washington: Family, Community, Religion, V.M. (eds.), Sankt-Peterburg v zerkale and Folklife in the City, 1850-1970, statisiki, Izdatel’stvo Sankt- Peterburgskogo universiteta ekonomiki i finansov, St. Petersburg 1993, pp. 12-22. 45 FALLOWELL, Duncan. One Hot Summer in St. Petersburg, Vintage, 1995, p. 15. 46 Ibid., p. 27 47 From a 1957 editorial as quoted in GILETTE, Jr. Howard, Between Justice and Beauty, p. 163. 48 JAFFE. Harry S. and SHERWOOD, Tom. Dream City. Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington. D.C., Simon & Schuster, New York 1994, p. 29. 49 GILLETTE, Jr., Howard, Between Justice and Beauty, p. 164. 50 Ibid., pp. 173-183. 51 For a discussion of Kristof ’s notion of the “urban process,” see KOSTOF, Spiro, The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History, Little, Brown & Co., Boston 1991, pp. 11-14.