The Dolgoe Lake district is a vast area of new buildings in the Primorsky District of St. Petersburg, bounded by Bogatyrsky Avenue, Kamyshovaya, Planernaya streets, Shuvalovsky Avenue, Parashyutnaya Street, and Sizov Avenue. The name of the area, as the name suggests, comes from the lake, which was partially filled in during the district’s development in the 1980s. Due to its elongated shape, it had a Finnish name long before the founding of St. Petersburg: Pitkyarvi, which translates as “long lake.” Since the 18th century, it has been called “Dolgoe Lake.”

At the beginning of the 20th century, the area near Dolgoe Lake almost became the site of a large-scale urban development project. It was planned to build a satellite city of St. Petersburg on the vacant land here. In the press, the future satellite city was called “American.”

“Near the capital, a huge new city, built ‘in the American style,’ will soon rise,” said the May 1913 issue of the “Petersburg Leaflet.” “Three joint-stock companies — the ‘Anonymous Belgian Society,’ the joint-stock company ‘Lahta,’ and the ‘St. Petersburg-Yalta Real Estate Partnership’ — formed a single partnership called the ‘Lahta Syndicate.’ It purchased 14 million square sazhen of land around Lahta and is creating a completely new city over an area of 56 square versts, designed for 250,000 to 300,000 residents. According to engineer Y.M. Tishchenko, who is in charge of the work, the syndicate has already invested seven million rubles in the project.”

Alas, the large-scale “garden city” project at Dolgoe Lake remained on paper. Its implementation was prevented by World War I and the 1917 revolution. Very little was accomplished: they began draining the swamps, started digging a canal from the Lahta Bay using a dredger, and built a dirt road lined with poplars on both sides. Traces of this road remain to this day: it is a clearing starting from the intersection of Planernaya and Dolgoozernaya streets and running northwest through the Yuntolovo forest area.

At that time, there were several attempts to create similar new city districts outside the city limits: one can recall the projects of the “Tsarsky Gorodok” beyond the Nevsky Gate and “New Petersburg” on Goloday Island. It was believed that settling the outskirts could be an effective means to combat the “housing shortage” experienced by St. Petersburg. “There is plenty of free land there, and its low cost cannot be compared to city land,” said the April 1912 issue of the “Petersburg Leaflet.” “In large Western European cities, this method of solving the housing problem is widely used. They have long concluded that the working population should work in the city but live outside it… A new Petersburg should be built next to the old one, avoiding in its layout and construction the inconveniences inherent in the old Petersburg, that is, to oppose the barracks-like city with a garden city.”

However, none of these projects were fully realized: as a rule, they turned out to be so grand and extensive that there simply were not enough funds. Although the main layout and even several buildings survived from the “Tsarsky Gorodok” and “New Petersburg” projects, the “garden city” project at Dolgoe Lake remained only on paper. How it was supposed to look can be seen on the “Plan of Petrograd with Nearby Surroundings” from 1916, which was an appendix to the address directory “All Petrograd.”

Here, a geometrically clear street network is depicted. The central avenue would have been Prince Alexander Petrovich Oldenburgsky Avenue, parallel to which would run Evgenievsky Avenue, Galician, Ekaterininskaya streets, and others. They were intersected by numbered streets (about forty). The compositional “cores” of the new “garden city” would have been two parks: the Large Park with a pond, accessed via the Black River, and the Medium Park (also with a pond) of a round shape, around which ran the Circular Drive. Both ponds would have been fed by water from the Sea Canal (which branched into two arms of the Lake Canal), specially dug from the Gulf of Finland. As noted in the press, the center of the new city was to occupy the territory of the Lahta swamp. “First of all, full city amenities are planned: sewerage, water supply, electric lighting, telephone, etc.,” said the May 1913 issue of the “Petersburg Leaflet.” “The streets will be continuous alleys, spacious squares, and parks with fountains. In the city center — a theater building, the future municipal building, and several educational institution buildings. Around the city — special cottages, that is, elegant houses with gardens, in the English style.” A resort and sanatorium were planned on the shore of the Gulf of Finland. For permanent and systematic drainage of the beach, it was intended to drain it “Dutch-style” using special electric pumps to remove rainwater.

It was assumed that the new satellite city would have excellent transport connections with the center of St. Petersburg. They planned to lay an electric tram line from Mikhailovskaya Square. Passengers could reach Mikhailovskaya Square with stops in 30 minutes, and without stops in 23 minutes.

“Private construction in the new city should be carried out under the supervision of a special artistic and construction commission, and only elegant houses will be allowed to be built,” the same publication of the “Petersburg Leaflet” reads further. “A special commission will also be responsible for selling plots of the city to private owners. But the city’s owner should be the municipality, for the establishment of which a petition is being submitted to the government so that the new settlement is recognized not as a suburb of St. Petersburg but as an independent urban entity. Interestingly, it is also planned to petition for the introduction of municipal police in the new city.”

Preliminary work on implementing the “garden city” project began, and even the Sea Canal was being dug. It can be assumed that if not for World War I, the “American” satellite city would have had good chances to appear on the site of the Lahta swamps. However, the war dashed all plans. With the outbreak of war in 1914, canal digging stopped, and the machine digging the canal (locals called it the “dredger”) remained in place. According to the memories of longtime residents, it “sank into the ground,” which was unsurprising given the swampy terrain of the area. The territories near Dolgoe Lake began to be developed only in the 1970s, and active development continues today. The nearly century-old “garden city” plan remains a kind of monument to its era…

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the Dolgoe Lake district became a site of mass housing construction. According to real estate experts, there is no “minimal” housing here: from the very beginning, houses of the best series were built, and the shortcomings in transport accessibility led to interest in this area from buyers for whom the absence of a metro is not critical, since there is a car in the family — a sign of a certain level of prosperity.

The municipal district “Ozero Dolgoe” (Dolgoe Lake) took its name from the lake and was established in 1997. In September 2008, the municipality’s coat of arms was approved, depicting a golden swan against a field divided by silver and red.

Sources:

https://spbvedomosti.ru/news/gorod/ostalsya-na-bumage-v-petrograde-planirovali-postroit-gorod-sputnik/

https://myguidebook.ru/b/book/3889125828/43