Revitalization and redevelopment using the example of 19th century gas holders

Disclaimer: I wrote this song three months ago, but I started (and stopped) working on this article almost 5 years ago. Since then, she has weighed heavily on my soul, I sometimes made very rare unsuccessful attempts to return to her, but only today I managed not only to continue, but also to bring the matter to the end (as best I could). Therefore, I will end with the words of the classic already quoted above: let everything in it remain as it was.

A gas holder, as the name suggests, is a container for storing gaseous substances. Modern gas holders are, as a rule, boring metal tanks of various sizes, but in the 19th century it was customary to approach the manufacture of gas holders (like many other things) with soul. I will tell you about the history of the appearance of gas tanks, how they are related to street lighting, and also what architecture has to do with it.

Background aka preamble

So many, many years ago in a distant galaxy Until the mid-19th century, the streets of large European cities were first lit by oil and then by kerosene lamps. At the same time, in France and Great Britain, at about the same time (at the very end of the 18th century), Philippe Le Bon and William Murdoch, with varying degrees of success, proposed using “thermolamps” for lighting, using pyrolysis gas. As a result, in 1809, in London, for the first time in Europe, several streets were lit by gas lamps.

In Russia, the pioneer in this regard was engineer P.G. Sobolevsky, who in 1811 developed his own version of the “thermal lamp”, and in 1812, together with his companion, retired lieutenant Gorrer (d’Orrer), received the Order of St. Vladimir, IV degree, “for the care and work with which they put into effect the dispensation thermal lamp, which did not exist in Russia before.” The history of Sobolevsky’s engineering career, in principle, is worthy of a separate story, but in order not to spoil the essence, I will only say that almost none of his undertakings (and among them, in addition to gas lamps, there were, for example, steamships) for one reason or another and was not fully implemented, which ultimately almost brought him to ruin.

So, here is how the operating principle of the “thermal lamp” and its structure were described in the newspaper “Severnaya Pochta” No. 96 or 97 for 1911:

A cast-iron cylinder embedded in the stove was filled with firewood, then the hole was tightly sealed, and the entire cylinder was strongly heated with burning wood. The firewood in the cylinder turned into coals from the intense heat with the simultaneous formation of acid and tar, and with the subsequent intensification of the fire, carbonic acid and gas (gas hydrogene oxi-carbure) were formed, which then entered the refrigerator. In it they cooled, while the acid and tar turned into drops, flowed into a receiving vessel, and the gas, passing through water, was purified and entered the storage facility…

Heating of the cylinder continues until the gas is separated; when the separation stops again, this serves as a sign that the firewood placed in the cylinder has completely turned into coal. Then, when the cylinder gets cold, it should be opened and the coal taken out. The cylinder is then refilled with wood to be heated again when gas separation is needed.

From … the storage facility, gas was supplied through tubes of various sizes to lamps installed indoors or outdoors. <...> When a lit paper or match is brought to an open tap, the gas coming out of the tube ignites, and the fire continues to burn at the opening of the tube until the gas stops coming out. Thus, it can be used either for lighting or for warming and heating.

A diagram of an improved version of the “thermal lamp” is shown in the figure.

Since in the figure, although with difficulty, you can still see the numbers, I think it’s worth giving a transcript (for convenience, I’ve removed the list under a spoiler).

A logical continuation of Sobolevsky’s initiatives was that in 1819–20. In St. Petersburg, a “thermal lamp” was put into operation, which powered the first gas lamps. But not everything went smoothly with the introduction of new technologies: in particular, as a result of what A.S. described. Pushkin in the “Bronze Horseman” flood of 1824, which led to a gas leak in the “gas establishment”, an explosion occurred. Fortunately, there were no casualties, but soon after this (in 1825) there was a decree from Emperor Alexander I “not allowing gas lighting without my special permission.” We had to wait 10 years for permission, when Nicholas I already allowed the establishment of a Society for lighting St. Petersburg with gas. It was then that the opportunity arose to use gas lighting everywhere, and not sporadically, as was the case before, which resulted in the construction of gas plants, an integral component of which were gas holders, which became the topic of this article.

By the way, it is worth noting that since there were no floods in Moscow, the Moscow Partnership of Portable Compressed Gas appeared several years earlier – in 1859 (though it extracted gas not from coal, but from oil). At the same time, the first gas plant in St. Petersburg was opened in 1863, and in Moscow – in 1865.

Gas plants

I will tell you about the construction of gas plants using the example of the Moscow Gas Plant. The history of its creation and operation is very interesting. In 1864, the then Moscow City Duma created a commission to study the issue of gas lighting. This commission studied the issue and prepared a draft contract for future contractors and published its terms in Russian and foreign newspapers. As a result, three entrepreneurs took part in the bidding: Nicholson, Bukie and Egorov. Bukie offered the lowest price (14.5 rubles for 2000 hours of burning of one lamp per year) and, accordingly, the contract went to him.

The British company of Boukier and Goldsmith was supposed to build a gas plant, a pipeline for delivering gas to the street lamps, install the lamps themselves and ensure, as they would say now, their uninterrupted operation. At the same time, it was clear from the very beginning that the money received for organizing street lighting would not be able to cover all the costs, so the company's main calculation was on selling gas to individuals (for lighting houses, apartments, etc.). However, firstly, for Muscovites of that time, having gas lighting at home turned out to be an expensive pleasure, and they were not very eager to use the services of Boukier and Goldsmith, and secondly, they had strong competitors in this market – kerosene traders who spread various fantastic rumors, including about the harm of gas to health, which scared off potential customers even more. By the way, at the initial stage, the company imported coal for gas production from England, that is, there was no talk of reducing the cost price in principle. As a result, by the end of the concession period (which was 30 years), the British were finally disappointed in their project and safely (probably) retreated, and the gas plant and all the infrastructure, through the hands of the French concessionaires, who were also not doing very well, became the property of the city.

As for the plant itself, it included several workshops with retort furnaces in which gas was formed by heating coal without air access, a gas cooling and purification building, a building with meters and gas pressure regulators in the city network, office buildings and dormitories for workers and , in fact, the main and auxiliary gas tanks for gas storage. From the gas tanks, gas was delivered through pipelines directly to the lamps and to those few houses whose owners nevertheless risked using such a high-tech method of lighting their homes.

Gas holders directly

After such a long journey, we finally got to the story of the gas holders themselves. As part of the Moscow Gas Plant, these were four round brick buildings 20 meters high, 10 meters deep and 40 meters in diameter. Interestingly, the unsupported ceilings of the dome of each of the gas holders were created according to the design of the famous architect Rudolf Bernhard, and were reconstructed at the beginning of the 20th century under the supervision of another famous architect and engineer, Vladimir Shukhov. The participation of such luminaries in this process also indicates that the gas holders were then an advanced achievement of engineering thought.

By the way, I forgot to mention that the gas holders in question are so-called wet-type gas holders – that is why, when speaking about the size of these buildings, I mentioned the depth. The principle of their operation is approximately as follows.

A so-called movable bell is placed in a stationary tank of water, which can move vertically along the walls of the gas tank using special rollers and guides. Gas is supplied through a pipe from the retort furnaces under the bell, which is held inside the gas tank on one side by the bell, and on the other by water, which prevents the gas from escaping from under the bell. By changing the water level, you can change the volume of gas and its pressure. From the gas tank, gas is supplied through the outlet pipe to the city gas pipeline and from there to street lamps or to the apartments of a few consumers. Naturally, this is a very simplified presentation of the basic principles, but since the article is devoted not so much to the technical as to the historical and architectural side of the issue, I think the given description is quite sufficient.

Unfortunately, the “career” of such gas tanks, although quite happy, was not very long: in the 20th century, electricity began to be responsible for street lighting, and pyrolysis gas was replaced by the use of natural gas, and gas plants, together with gas tanks, ceased to be “ basic necessities,” gradually began to decline.

Life after death

Here we proceed directly to the consideration of the concepts stated in the title, namely revitalization and redevelopment. What is it and what is it for? Most, if not all, large cities in the world have a rich legacy from past centuries in the form of many hectares of land built up with industrial architecture that has long since lost its original functions and was not used for its intended purpose. The situation was complicated by the fact that in many cases, these unused hectares were located in the central parts of cities, since it was simply more convenient from a transport, logistical and simply utilitarian point of view.

Naturally, leave exclusion zones in the form of abandoned factories in the city center newspapers, steamships – this is an unaffordable luxury. And here two options arise: demolish everything to hell and build it up with beautiful houses, office buildings and cafes, or place the same apartments, offices and cafes in existing buildings, adapting them to modern needs. Both of these options have been and are being used almost equally actively, but in this article, as the title suggests, I want to consider only the second option.

So, redevelopment is the adaptation of existing buildings to the new needs of the developer and his clients, and revitalization is giving a “new life” to a place, which inevitably occurs after all the manipulations performed, when, for example, an abandoned factory is transformed into an office center. So what new life was breathed into those few remaining gas holders that escaped demolition? The situation here, as in all other areas, differs quite significantly in Western European countries and in Russia.

Gas Eurotour

You can start, for example, with the famous Vienna Gasometers – four large gas holders converted into luxury housing.

In the internal volumes of the gas tanks, housing is compactly and comfortably located, and on the lower tiers, where there were once reservoirs, there is a shopping center, cinema, concert hall, etc. It turns out to be a kind of city within a city with “its own atmosphere.” The gas tanks finally ceased to function in the late 1970s; a competition for the best idea for their further use was held in 1995, and the project itself was implemented in 1999–2001.

An equally, and perhaps even more, large-scale project is the London area of ​​King's Cross with the station of the same name, famous among other things for its platform 9.^3/4. Until the early 2000s, this was not the most prosperous industrial area near the station. However, due to the construction of the Channel Tunnel and the launch of Eurostar trains, the station and the entire adjacent area had to be significantly rebuilt, as a result of which the area was significantly transformed, turning from depressive into elite.

There were also several gas holders located here since the Victorian era, which for obvious reasons ceased to operate. The English Heritage organization, which protects cultural monuments, really wanted to preserve this heritage and held an architectural competition, which was won by the WilkinsonEyre bureau. As a result, the cast iron gas holders were dismantled and then reassembled a little away from their original location and turned into an elite residential complex with a park: the so-called “Siamese triplets” – three gas holders intersecting with each other – were turned into a residential complex, and “gas holder No. 8” was turned into a park (although park is too strong a word, in general, a kind of public garden).

The competition was held in 2002, and the objects were handed over in 2018.

However, as they say, not just housing: in Copenhagen, the gas tank building is occupied by the Østre Gasværk theater, which in translation means Notre Dame Cathedral “Eastern Gas Plant”. In fact, the aforementioned gas holder, built in 1883, was part of this plant. In 1970, it was closed due to being no longer needed and was prepared for demolition, while simultaneously serving as (pun intended) a storage facility for the scenery of the Royal Danish Theatre, but starting in 1979, the building began to be used for individual theatrical productions and soon began to operate as a full-fledged theatre. In 2018, the theatre's interior underwent a large-scale renovation, and in 2023 it won the MONDO-DR Awards – an international award in the field of engineering entertainment projects – in the “Theater” category.

I have only looked at a few interesting examples, although in general there are dozens of similar stories that can be cited, but this is a task for a separate series of articles (which I will never write).

What do we have?

In Russia, there are also plenty of interesting stories from the life of gas holders. The most famous, large-scale and vibrant one is associated with the same Moscow gas plant from the first part of the article, now known as the Arma business cluster. Actually, “Arma” is the name of a plant for the production of gas shut-off valves, which operated here in the 90s of the twentieth century. And the Moscow Gas Plant itself lost its original function in the 1950s (in connection with the commissioning of the Saratov-Moscow gas pipeline), after which it began to produce gas equipment (stoves, meters, etc.). However, the dashing 90s did not spare Arma (which is a plant), production closed in 2002, various tenants began to occupy the workshops, mainly from the arts and entertainment sector (for example, the well-known Gazgolder club), and in the 2010s there was The space was revitalized, as a result of which it (and the gas tanks located here) acquired a modern look. Now there are various offices (including one of the offices of DIT Moscow), cafes, bars, clubs, beauty salons and so on.

The gas plant in St. Petersburg, previously mentioned in this article, generally repeated the fate of its Moscow counterpart: it survived closure (though back in 1910), transferred its capacity to another plant (though in this case, the Composite plant, which was quite far from the gas industry “), in recent times was in disrepair and was also partially revitalized in the 2010s – in 2017, in the building of an old gas tank on the Obvodny Canal, the largest planetarium in the world (and we don’t have it any other way) was opened – “Planetarium No. 1 “

However, in the same St. Petersburg, you can find an example of a more prosaic adaptation of a gas tank to modern needs. In 2016, the residential complex “House near Moskovsky Time” was commissioned in the Moskovsky District, right in the courtyard of which there was a 19th-century gas tank, built by the Society for lighting St. Petersburg with gas (yes, that same gas). The fate of this gas tank in its main stages repeats the fate of its previously mentioned counterparts: part of a gas plant – a non-core production in Soviet (thickly ground paints and whitewash) and Russian (furniture) times – revitalization. Why is its use more prosaic? Because in 2019, a multi-level parking lot for 89 cars was opened here.

In the process of preparing the article, I scoured the Internet in search of at least some information about the fate of gas tanks of the century before last in other cities of Russia (based on data that in the second half of the 19th century, a total of three hundred (!) gas plants operated in different provinces of Russia) , but I found only an archival photo of a gas tank at a gas plant in Kazan, coupled with a mention that two administrative buildings remained from the plant – and that’s all. In this regard, I urge readers, after throwing rotten tomatoes at me for the low quality of the article and jokes about being banned from Google, to share links or other information on this issue in the comments. For my part, I will cite several useful sources, the materials of which I also used when preparing the article:

P.S. Since, as I mentioned at the beginning, I started working on the article almost 5 years ago, too much water has flowed under the bridge since then and many of the links I used then do not open now – mainly those from which I drew the main historical information. This is one of the reasons why the above list of sources turned out so short. But nevertheless, I am pleased with the work done and to no lesser extent – with the fact that I finally closed the gestalt. Now it is definitely the end.