The lodging history of one of the first St. Petersburg houses: based on materials from the collection of N.P. Likhachev

Abstract

Nine tickets preserved in the collection of Nikolai Petrovich Likhachev (Archive of the St Petersburg Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Collection 238) were issued between 1723 and 1728 to non-commissioned officers and soldiers for billeting in the St Petersburg home of Ivan Venyukov, a clerk (pod’yachij) in the Senate Chancellery. The house was located on 2nd Oruzheynaya Street on Gorodskoy Island and contained four residential units.
According to the established norm (two people per one room), the Main Police Office sent 6–8 people to Venyukov’s house for billeting. The duration of a single stay at Venyukov’s home ranged from several months to six months.
Judging by the contents of the documents, homestead owners in St Petersburg were required to accommodate guests for 9.5 months a year; in 1726, this period was increased to 12 months. The authorities ensured equal distribution of billeting space and required the Chief Police Office to be promptly informed of the departure of lodgers. An analysis of the documents’ contents allowed us not only to reconstruct the billeting load of one of the first St Petersburg houses but also to clarify the billeting practices in St Petersburg, which are absent from other sources. The Appendix contains nine billeting tickets.