William Hastie (russian: Василий Иванович Гесте; c.1753 – 4 June 1832) was a Russian
architect
An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
,
civil engineer
A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...
and
town planner
An urban planner (also known as town planner) is a professional who practices in the field of town planning, urban planning or city planning.
An urban planner may focus on a specific area of practice and have a title such as city planner, town ...
of
Scottish descent. His name is also transliterated back from Russian as William Heste or, seldom, Vasily Heste. Because of his influence at court Heste's designs for buildings and whole towns can be seen throughout Russia.
Biography
William Hastie was born in either 1753 or 1763 in
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
. (A service roll from the year 1822 gives Hastie's age as 69, hence 1753, but the
Peterburg Necropolis lists him as being born in 1763.) He came to Russia in 1784 with a group of 73 Scottish craftsmen hired in
Edinburgh
Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian ...
by
Charles Cameron to work on construction sites in
Tsarskoe Selo
Tsarskoye Selo ( rus, Ца́рское Село́, p=ˈtsarskəɪ sʲɪˈlo, a=Ru_Tsarskoye_Selo.ogg, "Tsar's Village") was the town containing a former residence of the Russian imperial family and visiting nobility, located south from the c ...
. Hastie and his compatriot
Adam Menelaws
Adam Menelaws, also spelled Menelas (born between 1748 and 1756, presumably in Edinburgh – died 31 August 1831 in Saint Petersburg, russian: Адам Адамович Менелас) was an architect and landscape designer of Scottish origin, ...
made the most distinguished careers among this group, becoming notable professional architects.
[See also Shvidkovsky, 1996, for a detailed description of Cameron's workforce in Tsarskoye Selo.]
![PoliceBridge](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/PoliceBridge.jpg)
Hastie never returned to Scotland, and instead in 1792 he entered the service of the
Russian Imperial Chancellery, designing model buildings for mass construction. In July 1795 he joined the
Yekaterinoslav Governorate
The Yekaterinoslav Governorate (russian: Екатеринославская губерния, Yekaterinoslavskaya guberniya; uk, Катеринославська губернія, translit=Katerynoslavska huberniia) or Government of Yekaterinos ...
administration as its chief architect; in particular, in the
Crimea
Crimea, crh, Къырым, Qırım, grc, Κιμμερία / Ταυρική, translit=Kimmería / Taurikḗ ( ) is a peninsula in Ukraine, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, that has been occupied by Russia since 2014. It has a pop ...
Hastie surveyed the
Bakhchisaray Palace
The Khan's Palace ( tr, Han Sarayı) or Hansaray is located in the town of Bakhchysarai, Crimea. It was built in the 16th century and became home to a succession of Crimean Khans. The walled enclosure contains a mosque, a harem, a cemetery, livi ...
and other Tatar and Greek relics. Hastie left the southern provinces in June 1799, but returned to their architecture in the 1810s, producing a master plan for the redevelopment of
Yekaterinoslav
Dnipro, previously called Dnipropetrovsk from 1926 until May 2016, is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on the Dnieper Rive ...
, which was approved in 1817 and generally followed throughout the 19th century.
After serving in
Yekaterinoslav Governorate
The Yekaterinoslav Governorate (russian: Екатеринославская губерния, Yekaterinoslavskaya guberniya; uk, Катеринославська губернія, translit=Katerynoslavska huberniia) or Government of Yekaterinos ...
, he came back to
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
in 1803, and joined
Charles Gascoigne
Charles Gascoigne (1738–1806) was a British industrialist at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. He was a partner and manager of the Carron Company ironworks in its early years, but left in 1786, before the company's success became ob ...
as his assistant on the construction site of the
Izhorsky Zavod
Izhorskiye Zavody or Izhora Plants (russian: Ижо́рские заво́ды) is a Russian machine building joint stock company (OAO) belonging to the OMZ Group. It operates a major manufacturing plant in Kolpino, Saint Petersburg.
History
...
. Hastie is credited with designing and erecting the plant's administrative building and, together with Gascoigne, with building the dam across the
Izhora River
The Izhora (, ), also known as the Inger, is a left tributary of the Neva on its run through Ingria in northwestern Russia from Lake Ladoga to Gulf of Finland. The Izhora flows through Gatchinsky and Tosnensky Districts of Leningrad Oblast as wel ...
. Here Hastie acquired practical skills in metalworking and bridge engineering.
In February 1805 Hastie returned to Saint Petersburg and was assigned to building bridges over the city's smaller rivers. He built the
Blue
Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when obs ...
,
Green
Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 Nanometre, nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by ...
,
Red
Red is the color at the long wavelength end of the visible spectrum of light, next to orange and opposite violet. It has a dominant wavelength of approximately 625–740 nanometres. It is a primary color in the RGB color model and a secondar ...
and
Potseluev bridges. They were the first in Saint Petersburg to be made from cast iron. From 1808 to 1832 Hastie was the head architect of Tsarskoye Selo. He created a general plan for construction in the town. From 1810 Hastie was involved in most urban construction projects in Russia.
After the
1812 fire of Moscow
Year 181 ( CLXXXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Aurelius and Burrus (or, less frequently, year 934 ''Ab urbe condit ...
which destroyed three quarters of the city Hastie was the first to propose a detailed redevelopment plan. It rejected for disregarding the historical background of the city.
William Hastie died on 4 June 1832 in
Tsarskoye Selo
Tsarskoye Selo ( rus, Ца́рское Село́, p=ˈtsarskəɪ sʲɪˈlo, a=Ru_Tsarskoye_Selo.ogg, "Tsar's Village") was the town containing a former residence of the Russian imperial family and visiting nobility, located south from the cen ...
, where he was buried in a Protestant cemetery.
[Anthony Cross, ‘Hastie, William (1754/5–1832)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Oct 200]
accessed 28 Nov 2013
/ref>
References
Bibliography
*
*
Architects of Tsarskoe Selo
*
* (biography of Charles Cameron)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hastie, William
Scottish architects
Russian architects
Scottish expatriates in Russia
1763 births
1832 deaths
1753 births