Stories of technical innovation

The world’s first radio station was launched in Pittsburgh, USA, in 1920. Vilnius was only seven years behind the global trend: radio waves began to spread from the city in 1927, although the first radio transmission from Vilnius was on 4 March from the Vilnius Radio Engineering Bureau located at Gedimino pr. 23. This was a one-off attempt related to St. Casimir’s Fair, but it was another six months before a serious radio station could be set up. Vilnius Radiophone rented a private house (built in 1905) near Žvėrynas Bridge and started regular broadcasts on 4 December. From a small temporary studio, the broadcasts were made every day from 17:00 to 22:00. The programme, which the townsfolk could find in newspapers, consisted of music concerts, poetry readings, radio plays, and daily broadcasts from the Chapel of the Gates of Dawn. The radio became an increasingly popular pastime in Vilnius: in just six months since the beginning of its operation, the number of radio subscribers in the city increased from 534 to 5,113. The growing radio boom, the modest size of the studio, and the low power of the station (transmissions from the studio could be heard only 10-15 km away) led to the installation of a much more powerful transmitting station in Liepkalnis in 1931; in 1935, the radio administration, editorial office, and studio were moved from Žvėrynas to a permanent modern studio at Gedimino pr. 22, the current building of the State Small Theatre of Vilnius. Before the radio station was established, the building had functioned as a cinema, and when its 220 m², 7.5 m-high hall was transformed into a studio for radio concerts, it became the largest in the whole of Polish territory. Interestingly, until the Second World War, the radio’s call sign was that of the cuckoo, produced by a special mechanical device said to symbolise the spirit of the country’s forests and nature.

The first power plants in Vilnius, as in Lithuania, were private – installed for the personal needs of the noble, wealthy people who followed the world’s technical innovations (the first power plant in Lithuania was installed in 1890 by Count Juozapas Tiškevičius to light the palace and orangery of Kretinga Manor). The first electric light bulbs in Vilnius shone in 1897 at Gedimino pr. 19: a small electricity station was installed in the basement of a house owned by wealthy citizens. As usual, the station was initially used only for domestic purposes: the larger rooms of the building were lit by arc lamps, while the smaller rooms were lit by incandescent bulbs. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t long before the neighbours also wanted this modern convenience in their homes – the famous architect Mikhail Prozorov wanted to bring electricity to his wife’s house at A. Jakšto g. 9, which he himself had designed. Thus, in 1898, the first electricity sales contract in the history of Vilnius took place, and an overhead electricity line was laid between the houses. 

In the Middle Ages, the city of Vilnius began developing on the left bank of the Neris River, as it was difficult to cross the torrential river. It was not until the end of the 14th century when the first wooden bridge across the Neris was built slightly to the left of the present one, that development began on the right bank of the river. A little more is known about the bridge from the 16th century – in 1536, the wooden Renaissance-style ‘Great’ or ‘Vilnius’ bridge was constructed. It had a wood-shingled deck, shops and stone gates on both sides, with premises for guards and toll booths (there was a charge to use the bridge to recoup the costs of production). Grand Duke Sigismund the Old granted the bridge builder a ‘privilege’, making it illegal to build bridges across the Neris between Bistryčia (now in Belarus) and Kernavė or to build footbridges, ferries, or any other means of crossing the river between Verkiai and Paneriai. The bridge has been the subject of many disasters in the history of Vilnius; it has been repaired, reconstructed, dismantled, and rebuilt many times and has burnt down several times, collapsing in 1673 due to being unable to withstand the pressure from floating river ice that caused an ice jam. It was first called the Green Bridge in 1766 after it was painted green at the expense of Jan Sollohub, a landlord treasurer. The first metal bridge in Vilnius was built in 1893-1894, designed by Nikolai Belelubsky, a famous professor at the St. Petersburg Institute of Transport. At the time, it was an impressive engineering structure that even survived the First World War – in 1915, the retreating Russian army unsuccessfully tried to blow it up. However, the bridge was destroyed by a fateful detonation in July 1944 by the German army. The present bridge was rebuilt in 1951 by military construction crews, with cast-iron railings brought by the Soviets as spoils of war from East Prussia. The bridge was originally named after Felix Dzerzhinsky, and from 1952, after Ivan Chernyakhovsky, while in 1990, it was restored to its original name of ‘Žaliasis’.

At the end of the 19th century, the Vilnius authorities began to promote the idea of replacing the inefficient and maintenance-intensive gas streetlights with electric ones. In addition, there were dreams of an electric tramway to replace the horse-drawn carriage on rails. In 1899, it was decided to build a coal-fired power station. The building was designed by Vladislov Malinovski, an engineer from Vilnius, and the engines and machinery were installed by German firms. For the first time in the city, modern columnar metal truss structures were used to support the heavy machinery. Such structures were used a few years later in the construction of the Halės Market. The administrative building of the power plant was enlivened by a corner turret topped by the statue ‘Elektra’ by B. Balzukiewicz, symbolising the victory over gas and a new era of light (the statue was destroyed during the Soviet era, but restored in 1994 by the sculptor Petras Mazuras). 

The power station was scheduled to begin operating on 14 January 1903 (which was 1 January according to the Julian calendar), but a storm in December broke the poorly installed new lights and delayed the start-up for a month. The arc lamps on the main street of Vilnius were lit on the evening of 14 February 1903 (1 February). From its commissioning, the power station was one of the most modern in the region and was constantly upgraded. In 1944, as the Red Army approached, the retreating German army partially blew up the power station, but it was rebuilt in the post-war period and was fully operational again until 1963 when the Elektrėnai power station was constructed. At that time, the old power station lost its importance in the electricity supply system and switched to cogeneration, supplying steam and hot water to Vilnius residents and industry. The power plant was completely shut down in 1998, and in 2003 the Museum of Energy and Technology Museum was established – you can see the surviving authentic power generation equipment and exhibitions dedicated to the development of Lithuanian industry and technology. 

The Vilnius water supply system is the oldest in Lithuania, dating back to 1501 when Grand Duke Alexander of Lithuania granted Dominican monks the privilege to use the Vingriai springs. In the early 20th century, it was decided that the city’s rapid growth required a modern, centralised water supply. The German hydraulic engineer Oskar Smreker was entrusted with its installation, and the plans were detailed by the engineer Eduard Schoenfeld. The work on the water supply started in the Bernardine Garden (now Sereikiškių Park), where a pumping station was built in 1912. Although the First World War hampered the creation of the water supply system, by 1916, the main construction of the centralised water supply system had already been completed. The pumping station remained in operation until 1944 when it was blown up by the retreating German army as one of a few important strategic objects. In 1945, the pumping station was rebuilt, maintaining the planned structure of the building. The water supplies are stored in an underground reservoir of 3,500 m³, which has been preserved since its construction and is emptied every five years to remove manganese and iron deposits. The Sereikiškės water supply pumping station is the only water supply station in the city that has been in operation for so long, supplying water to the residents of the centre of Vilnius and the Old Town, as well as to all the country’s most important government institutions: the Seimas, the Government, and the Presidency. Since 1976, the Water Supply History Museum has been operating at the waterworks; you should arrange your visit in advance.

The Vilnius University Astronomical Observatory, founded in 1753, was the first astronomical observatory in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and one of the first in Europe. The Observatory of this scientific institution was founded by the astronomer and mathematician Tomasz Zebrowski, who also designed the building. The White Hall was an important part of the old observatory: it was used for storing and using astronomical instruments, making observations and giving lectures. The Observatory was founded by Duchess Elżbieta Ogińska-Puszyna, the first woman in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to take such an active interest in mathematics and astronomy. The memory of this patron is commemorated in the frieze on the west wall of the White Hall. 

The Observatory flourished especially under the leadership of Marcin Poczobutt, a pupil of T. Zebrowski, who equipped the Observatory with modern instruments and initiated the construction of the Observatory’s extension (architect: Marcin Knackfus). The work of Poczobutt secures him a place among the most famous astronomers of the 18th century: he observed solar and lunar eclipses in Vilnius, determined the geographical coordinates of Vilnius, and formed a new constellation of 16 stars (of which he discovered nine), which he named Taurus Poniatovii (Poniatowski’s Bull). Poczobutt’s initiative enabled the observatory to compete with the Greenwich and Paris observatories. The Observatory remained open until 1882 when it was closed by order of Tsar Alexander III, and most of the instruments were distributed to various institutions of the Russian Empire. The observatory is now part of the VU Library, with a reading room in the White Hall. The Hall is decorated with preserved astronomical instruments and unique globes dating from the 17th-18th centuries; exhibitions and other cultural events are held here. 

The first telephone exchange in Vilnius was installed in 1896 in the Vilnius Central Post Office, located at the junction of Jono and Pilies Streets in the former Radziwiłł Palace. The buildings on the site belonged to the Radziwiłł family from the middle of the 16th century. The palace was renamed the Cardinalia (the Cardinal’s Palace) in 1586 when Cardinal Jerzy Radziwiłł of the Catholic Church became its owner. After the death of the last owner of the palace, Stefania Radziwiłł-Wittgenstein, the Cardinalia passed to the Russian State Treasury and later to the Vilnius Governorate Post Office. After the reconstruction, the palace housed the central post office, later the telegraph office and, in the courtyard, the post office stagecoach station. 

The building was damaged at the end of World War II but was not destroyed. Despite a reconstruction project, the Cardinalia was demolished in 1957 after one wall fell, and a block of flats was built on the site in 1979. Even before that, around 1965-1970, at the height of the Cold War, the underground shelter, which had been built by the Poles between the wars, had been improved, and a KGB-monitored telecommunication hub had been installed under the courtyard housing in the event of a nuclear war. This shelter was abolished after the restoration of independence. The building housed the ‘Lietuvos ryšiai’ division of the joint-stock company AB’ Lietuvos telekomas’, which operated there until the company was privatised in 1995.

The first craftsmen’s guilds in Western Europe began to emerge as early as the 10th and 12th centuries. Having reached a high level of professionalism, craftsmen joined these professional organisations in order to obtain a monopoly on production, rights to the management of the city, and autonomy of their activity. The statute of the first Vilnius guild, the Goldsmiths’ Guild, was approved by Grand Duke Alexander of Lithuania in 1495. The ruling elite of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was familiar with Western jewellery culture through the gifts received from the Masters of the Teutonic Knights and the imported religious devotional objects of the Catholic Church. As the upper class expanded and the demand for jewellery grew, individual goldsmiths from Poland and German centres of goldsmithing began to relocate to Vilnius. Their associations formed a guild, which meant that the professional level of craftsmen was already high enough, and the competition on the local market was quite intense. The guild supplied the entire diocese of Vilnius – the territories up to the Daugava and the Dnieper rivers – with its wares. To become a member of the Goldsmiths’ Guild, one had to make three items: a tankard, a seal with a carved helmet, and a ring with an embedded precious gemstone. The activities of the institution covered all areas of the members’ lives: they settled disputes among themselves, cared for the families of sick or deceased members, and even had their own chapel. With the establishment of the Goldsmiths’ Guild, the remaining independent members of the profession lost the right to practice their trade in Vilnius. The former goldsmiths’ headquarters is now the seat of the Romanian Embassy.

More than ninety years passed between the invention of the printing press by Johann Gutenberg in 1455 and the publication of the first Lithuanian book – Martynas Mažvydas’ ‘Catechism’ – in 1547. The first book in Lithuania was printed a little earlier, in 1522, at the printing house of Francysk Skaryna at the intersection of Stiklių and Didžioji streets. Hailing from Polatsk, Skaryna was a printer and a humanist who had studied in Krakow and Padua. In 1517, he established his first printing house in Prague and published The Psalter and other Old Testament books. Later he moved to Vilnius and, with the support of the burgomaster of Vilnius, Jakub Babič, established the first printing house in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In 1522, he published the ‘The Little Travel Book’ for travelling merchants, which contained psalms, various instructions, and a calendar with astronomical and astrological information. This and other books published by Skaryna, written in the old Ruthenian language, are characterised by excellent artistic design. These publications undoubtedly had an impact on the development of culture throughout Central and Eastern Europe. In 1530, when the printing house burnt down, Skaryna left the city. The tradition of publishing in this place was continued by the ‘Mamoničiai Printing House’, which operated here from 1574 to 1624 and was the most important printing house in Vilnius during its lifetime, with the title and privileges of a royal printing house. 

Today, the place of the origins of book publishing in Lithuania is marked by a memorial plaque on Didžioji Street and Vaclovas Krutinis’s sculpture ‘Metraštininkas’ (‘The Annalist’) in the courtyard of the so-called ‘Printing House Courtyard’ on Stiklių Street, which depicts a man sitting on his knees with an open book. There is also a Belarusian gymnasium in Vilnius that is named after P. Skaryna.

It was not until the late 19th century that buildings over four storeys began to be built in the world’s city skylines, as this was when the introduction of steel and reinforced concrete, the invention of safe elevators with safety devices, and the use of electricity took off. The world’s first 10-storey skyscraper was built in Chicago in 1885. The first two-block Vilnius high-rise (36 m high) was built in 1901-1903. The seven-storey building on Mindaugas Street was designed by Count Tadeusz Rostworowski, while the smaller, three-storey State Audit Office building and the ornate arched gateway connecting the two structures were designed by Konstantin Koroyedov. This building was unrivalled in Vilnius and throughout the Russian Empire at the time, standing out in the cityscape and being clearly visible from many districts of Vilnius. 

The Rostworowski building housed the board of the Polesie Railway (Vilnius-Lida-Baranavichy-Rovno section). The impressive multi-storey building has served the railways at all times: it housed the railway administrations of Poland, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union. After 1990, it was the seat of AB’ Lietuvos geležinkeliai’– Lithuanian Railways. In the summer of 2020, it was announced that the company would move physically closer to the trains and tracks; the Vilnius’ Connect Transport’ centre is being built in the vicinity of Vilnius Railway Station, so the original building, which has been a symbol of the company for many years, will be handed over for public use by Lithuanian society

During the Second World War, Vilnius was badly damaged, with 75% of its industry and 40% of its residential buildings destroyed. Post-war reconstruction work was carried out, and industrial ambitions were developed in line with the standards of general Soviet industrialisation. The reconstruction of the capital required a large energy capacity, and it was decided to build a new power plant in the southwest of Vilnius, in line with the industrial development planned for this area. The plan was to supply not only electricity but also heat to the factories, so a cogeneration plant was built. In 1957, centralised cogeneration began in Vilnius, with the construction of more heat networks and increased energy production so that the Vilnius Thermal Power Plant (TEC-2) no longer only supplied electricity and heat just to industry but also to the city’s residential buildings. The first domestic consumer connected to the city’s heat network was the residential building at Vytenio g. 10.