The 19th century: a shopper’s paradise in Vilnius

Once you arrive in 19th-century Vilnius, leave your belongings in George’s hotel room and your horse in the adjacent stables, and set out to explore the city’s attractions. Rest assured, you’re staying in a splendid place, and if you want to spend more time in the hotel, you can also rent a suite here for longer. The hotel was designed by the architects of manor houses, Count Tadeusz Rostworowski and Alexander Lubański; on the ground floor, you can enjoy a meal, while the third and fourth floors are where you can listen to a concert, watch a play, or organise your own event. In fact, before the fire of 1944, the building had a slightly different appearance, with two gates and masonry arches above them. Only one of the gates has been preserved.

Would you like to try the tastiest chocolate in town? Visit the ‘Viktorija’ factory sweet shop located near the Cathedral, in the building at Gedimino pr. 2. The cheerful teddy bears perched on the facade of the building snacking on chocolate bars are still a reminder of the Bunimovich family’s thriving business empire. In the 19th century, hundreds of workers produced chocolate and sweets in the factory that were enjoyed not only by Vilnius residents who shopped in the four shops in Vilnius, but also by people from all over the Russian Empire and abroad. In 1900, ‘Viktorija’ chocolate won a gold medal at the World Exhibition in Paris. Incidentally, Israel Bunimovich, who built a successful business corporation, came from a very poor family and was the son of a water carrier. That’s probably why, when the business became successful, he gave much of his time and money to charities and hospitals. Although the ‘Viktorija’ factory was destroyed by fire, the precious know-how survived through Antanas Gricevičius, the founder of the well-known Lithuanian chocolate factory ‘Rūta’, who had learned the secrets of candy making at the ‘Viktorija’ factory. Thus, the chocolate from the old factory continued to sweeten life, even when the original factory was no more.

The Vilnius University (VU) Pharmacy Prescription Book is one of the oldest surviving documents, containing the recipes for making the medicinal concoctions penned by doctors and professors. They reveal that in the 19th century, most medicines were plant-based in origin. Today, you wouldn’t always find such medicines in a pharmacy: among the most popular were rhubarb root, elder flowers, opium, beaver castor sacs, poppy syrup, potassium nitrate, mint grass, and ‘Oxymell’ – a mixture of honey and vinegar. However, one old remedy can be found on the shelves of our everyday grocery stores; it is kefir, which was sold in pharmacies in the 19th century and was even awarded gold medals. Pharmacies also offered therapeutic kefir fermented with Caucasian mushrooms and even provided a free home-delivery service. Today, we see ‘Nestlé’ products for children on the shelves, and it is known that 120 years ago, baby milk formula from Switzerland reached pharmacies in Vilnius. Furthermore, even back then, soup could be flavoured with a ‘Maggi’ bouillon stock cube. And, of course, we cannot fail to mention vaccines. As early as 1808, the Vaccination Institute in Vilnius was looking for more effective ways of preparing vaccines against smallpox and more efficient methods of vaccination than those that existed at the time. Vaccines were production, and Lithuanian vaccines were sold not only in Lithuania, but also exported to Italy, Switzerland, and other European countries.

Imagine how active life must have been on Žydų Street (Jewish Street) if as many as 500 residents were registered in one 50-apartment building. Not only did people live in densely populated and crowded spaces, they also traded heavily. One building could house up to 50 shops, selling everything under the sun. And since you’re in 19th-century Vilnius, you can add to your basket not just unleavened matzos biscuits, groats, or books, but also fabrics, clothes, groceries, haberdashery, crystal products, and other goods. Pay a visit to the Passementerie workshop to browse around. What is that? If you lived in the 19th century and liked to dress up or decorate your home, you would know that you could buy gold and silver trimmings and lace for clothes and furniture here. The Jewish Quarter, known in the 19th century as the ‘Black City’ was also the birthplace of artisan craftspeople and home to a variety of workshops. Although the goods might have been luxurious, the owners of small shops and workshops could barely make ends meet. Those who did not have a shop would sell from a niche in the wall. The fact that the vendors were visited by many customers every day is evident from the 3,000 daily visitors to the public toilet here.

If you lived in the 19th century and were really hard up and struggling with money, you could go to a second-hand and rag market, where you could belongings, crockery, clothes, and even rags to traders. Rags were a valuable material in those days – they were processed manually at the paper factory in Naujieji Verkiai and used to manufacture paper. Paper made from cellulose was considered inferior and was only produced when rags were scarce. Linen and cotton fabrics, canvas scraps and cuttings, and worn-out underwear were particularly valued. The latter, however, also caused various infections among the women who sorted the rags and tatters in the paper mills. Bones and bristle were also in demand in the marketplace and were later used to make combs and brushes, buttons, and cutlery handles. These goods also posed a danger. At the end of the 19th century, fears of an imminent cholera epidemic led to very strict measures, including the disinfection of the market yard and moving as many as 48 stalls to a location outside the city. However, these precautions did not stop trade, which continued even after these measures.

If you moved back to the 19th century and didn’t have a lot of time, you could probably buy everything you needed in the shops on Vokiečių Street. At that time, it was predominantly populated by Germans, and Vokiečių Street was the main trading place for centuries. In the second half of the 19th century, Jews started settling and trading here. Gold ribbon bows, herring, buttons, or pens – everything could be found here. As you move into the 19th century, don’t forget to visit the fur and headwear shop of Lejba Kacew, father of the world-famous writer Romain Gary, and stay in the tallest building in 19th-century Vilnius – the famous ‘Hotel Europa’ – built by the architect Mykolas Šulcas using masonry he had purchased from an unfinished Piarist church. Unfortunately, only half of the street from that time remains today: the houses on the eastern side of the street, which stood where the pedestrian promenade now stretches, were destroyed during the Second World War.

A five-storey department store in Vilnius?! In the North-Western part of the Russian Empire, Vilnius’ most opulent shopping malls looked like something from the future. In Leib and Rebecca Zalkind’s shop, you’d find fabrics, furniture, carpets, clothing, fur, French gloves, and English corduroy, clothes made according to the latest fashions in Warsaw, Vienna, or Paris, confectionery and… you could even order the latest technological marvel – a car. You wouldn’t have got tired searching for goodies in the shops going up and down the five floors because you were able to experience taking one of the city’s first lifts. If you’d been short of cash, you’d have found a branch of the Azov-Don Bank of Russia here. And you could have recorded a snapshot of your life for posterity at the Morris Grossman photography pavilion. There are 150 staff on hand to make sure you found everything and exactly what you needed in the department store. Today, this building is also home to luxury shops, and memories of the old days are preserved in a scrapbook of lithographed images of Vilnius published by the owner, Leib Zalkind, with advertisements for the shop. It was probably the only shop that was not only advertised in the newspapers, and was sometimes referred to in French as ‘Grand Magasins’.

Welcome to Apsirijėlių (Glutton’s) Lane – the name of this street in the 19th century. And for good reason as meat trade had been taking place here since the 16th century, with the first city privileges granted to the butchers’ guild as early as the year 1596. This street separated the Jewish Quarter of Vilnius from the Christian area. Today, you will be greeted by ‘The Merchant’ – a graphic mural by the ‘Walls Remember’ project on the wall of the building at Mėsinių g. 3.

Imagine: in those days, there were no refrigerators as we know them, so storing, transporting, and selling meat was difficult; animals were only slaughtered on certain days in the hope of selling the meat quickly. In Vilnius in the 19th century, there was a ‘Christian’ butchers’ guild, founded in 1795, which not only enjoyed various privileges, but also took care of the sale of meat, the correct weighing of meat, the cleanliness of the shops, and even the treatment of customers. It was not uncommon for guilds to come into conflict with merchants, and members of the butchers’ guild could be fined for buying meat from Jewish butchers and selling it in their own shops. Incidentally, with the emergence of the Executive Sanitary Commission, a lot of attention was paid to the state of sanitation in the shops. There are extant records of sausages being made from horse meat and rotting swine. In the press, citizens complained about onions, lard, charcoal being found in sausages, and even sand and hair.

Don’t be surprised if you meet a water carrier on Vilniaus Street. This very important and difficult profession for the inhabitants of old Vilnius was often a job done by the poorest city dwellers. Having a water supply installed in a house was extremely rare, and as the population grew in the second half of the 19th century, Vilnius began to experience a shortage of tap water. As a result, many residents cooked with water from rivers or ponds. People who lived farther away from water sources or springs and did not have access to wells had to use the service of water carriers. Three water wells were available for public use: near the University, on Šv. Ignoto Street, and near the synagogue on Žydų Street. However, water carriers also drew water from rivers and fountains. It is true that you would probably refuse to taste the river water – it was certainly not pure and crystal clear. Since the sewerage system had not yet been very well developed, a lot of waste water went straight into rivers. It is therefore not surprising that drinking water was an important commodity that was often advertised, and some Vilnius residents themselves even advertised that they sold boiled drinking water. The sculpture by Romas Kvintas not only recognises the significance of this profession but also presents a fragment of the Jewish history of Vilnius.

As you walk down the street, you’ll see the restored sign boards of old shops. Kerosene and salt shops used to attract a variety of customers. And in the 19th century, women, especially Jewish women, were often found behind the counter, so it is not surprising to see their names on signs. While salt and kerosene were needed by everyone, the goods found in colonial shops smacked of luxury. Spices, dried fruit, coffee, sugar, tea, chocolate – these were the smells that wafted from these shops. There were smuggled and even counterfeit goods, such as dried tea leaves or herbs that had already been used once. However, reputable shopkeepers did their best to protect themselves from such cases. Newspapers printed samples of real brands and packages started to be properly labelled. Not surprisingly, the long journey to Lithuania meant that tea cost a lot of money – a pound of tea would set you back up to two weeks’ worth of a peasant’s wages. In Lithuania and Poland, it was believed that the only decent tea was the expensive ‘caravan’ tea, which came from China via Russia by camel.

Bread was very important to Vilnius citizens in the 19th century too, so in addition to small shops and home-baked loaves, there were also large bakeries and confectionery shops in Vilnius. In 1897, the nobleman Antoni Tyszkiewicz bought a steam mill in Šv. Stepono Street and started grinding the grain and milling the flour from his estate; soon a new steam bakery was built nearby. Here, bread and rolls were baked for the inhabitants of Vilnius. However, no matter how much care was taken to maintain cleanliness, the Executive Sanitary Commission received a complaint that a Mr Fridliander had found two pieces of glass the size of a 5-kopek coin in the biscuits he had bought from Tyszkiewicz’ Bakery on Vokiečių Street. The dough prepared in the bakery was also sold to other bakers. By 1902, Tyszkiewicz had a complete bread trading network with his chain of 68 shops. All of his bakeries were different from the traditional shops in the city: they were uniform, clean, painted white, and had semicircular signs. In addition, Tyszkiewicz also owned a café with the best view in the city: in the early 20th century, in the tower on Gediminas Hill, you could enjoy Tyszkiewicz’s pastries, coffee, or tea – a wonderful spot for admiring the panorama of the city.