Wednesday Walk: Old Factory on the Seashore

September in our city is a lottery. Sometimes on 1 September the temperature drops to +10 and it starts to rain. And in other years, only the nights are cold, but during the day the sun shines and the air warms up well. This year, the beginning of September is much more likely to bring good weather than to bring rain and cold wind.

On this day, the weather was warm and sunny, and you'd think it was still August, not September. I got off work quite early and decided not to go straight home, but instead to walk to the Gulf of Finland and relax on the shore for a while.

It may seem a little strange, but the seashore of Vasilyevsky Island was not a popular holiday destination in past centuries. Rather the opposite. It was a deserted area in which no one wanted to settle themselves or build hotels for holidaymakers. The city grew rapidly upstream of the Neva, but the river mouth and the surrounding area remained sparsely populated for a long time.

This seemingly strange fact has a simple explanation. In the waters of the Gulf of Finland there is a periodic phenomenon of surge waves, which is very dangerous for the coastal area. That is why people of the past preferred to build their houses in safer places. Only in the 19th century some industrialists found an opportunity to locate some production facilities here.

In recent times, the problem with the surge waves has been solved and the town is now protected by a dam. The coastal land immediately became a very popular place for new construction. Old factories are being moved to new sites, and apartment blocks are being built on the vacated land. The old factory buildings along the bay shore have been given over to recreational parks and creative spaces.

The most famous of these spaces is Sevkabelport, this space has been operating for several years and is very popular among citizens and tourists. But this time I decided to reach another space, which is called Brusnitsyn Cultural Quarter. Brusnitsyn is the surname of a landowner who founded a tannery on these lands in the second half of the 19th century.

The space of the quarter started to be improved recently, and some buildings look archaic - they have been cleaned up a bit, but the continuation of the repair is still in the future. The grounds inside the old factory walls are open on the bay side, but closed on the other three sides - I think these walls will be a good protection from the cold autumn winds soon.

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Smartphone	Google Pixel 3a
Location	Saint Petersburg, Russia

This is my entry for the #WednesdayWalk challenge by @tattoodjay.