Red Bridge

The Red Bridge spans the Moika along the axis of Gorokhovaya Street, connecting Kazansky Island and Second Admiralteysky Island in the center of St. Petersburg. Among the city's "color-named" crossings it holds a special place: of all the Moika bridges built to the standard design of the engineer William Hastie, only this one has survived to the present day in its original external form. The structure is listed among Russia's federal historical and cultural landmarks.

A wooden bridge is already marked here on plans dating from 1717. In 1737 the master builder Herman van Boles erected a drawbridge with a roughly 70-centimeter gap in the middle, through which masted vessels could pass. Fifteen years later the chief of police, Tatishchev, issued a special order requiring the Red, Green, and Blue bridges to be kept as drawbridges and painted green — an order that sounds ironic given the bridge's present name. By the end of the 18th century the crossing had been rebuilt in timber, with the lifting mechanism removed.

In 1808, at the same time as the Moika's banks were being faced in granite, construction began on a single-span cast-iron bridge to Hastie's standard design, following the already tested pattern of the Green Bridge. The war with Napoleon halted the work until 1813, and it was completed only in 1814; the cast-iron sections of the span were cast at the Demidov works in the Urals. Emperor Alexander I attended the ceremonial opening and was the first to cross the new bridge.

The name itself derives from the color of the wooden crossing: painted white, the bridge was officially fixed as the "White Bridge" by decree of the building commission in 1738, and from 1778 it acquired its present name. Together with the Green, Blue, and later renamed Yellow bridges, the Red Bridge formed part of the color-coded system of landmarks along the Moika familiar to residents of St. Petersburg. The bridge's approaches were adorned with granite obelisks bearing gilded spheres and lanterns on brackets, and the railing pattern echoed that of the embankment's own ironwork.

By the mid-20th century the load-bearing structure had deteriorated: between 1924 and 1950 the piers and span deformed, joints opened up in the box sections, connecting bolts sheared, and around forty deep cracks appeared in the ribs. A special commission declared the bridge to be in an emergency condition, and in 1953–1954 the engineer V. V. Blazhevich replaced the cast-iron sections with welded metal arches and a reinforced-concrete roadway slab, preserving the structure's former appearance; the architect A. L. Rotach restored the granite obelisks and lanterns.

A 1998 restoration renewed the lanterns and recreated the railings, in 2011 the metal elements were repainted, and works carried out from March to October 2023 included cleaning the granite, repairing the railings, and restoring the decorative details. Today the bridge carries three traffic lanes and pedestrian walkways, and the historic embankment buildings nearby survive, including the former trading house of Esders and Scheyfals.

Having endured a century and a half of service and a thorough mid-20th-century renewal of its load-bearing structure, the Red Bridge remains a rare example of the authentic appearance of Hastie's era among the bridges of the Moika, and a notable monument to the engineering art of old St. Petersburg.