William (Vassily Ivanovich) Hastie
(1763 (?) - 1832)

Yet another Scotsman in Russian public service, engineer and architect Vassily Ivanovich Hastie was born ca. 1753 or, according to other historians, a decade later. In March 1787, he and 23 British stonemasons renewed their contract with the Tsarskoe Selo Building Company. The contract gave them 350 roubles a year, free housing, a 15-hour working day with breakfast and lunch breaks 2 hours each, and 30 roubles for a ticket back to Scotland. William Hastie, however, never went back. Instead, he joined Her Imperial Majesty's Cabinet service in 1792.

Between 1806 and 1820, Hastie designed and supervised the construction of numerous cast-iron bridges in St Petersburg: the Green Bridge, the Red Bridge, the Potseluev, Obvodny and Alexandrovsky Bridges. Hastie combined this with his ongoing design and construction work in Tsarskoe Selo. He was the town architect of Tsarskoe Selo from 1808 to 1832. Having been appointed to that post in 1808, Hastie immediately mapped out a general building plan, dividing Tsarskoe Selo into blocks filled with symmetrical structures. The blocks were further subdivided into buildings, gardens and vegetable patches. There was to be four squares in the town: market square, town hall square, semicircular square and Znamenskaya Square. Hastie's urban development plans were recognized as 'model,' and, in 1811, sent out to all the provinces as a binding instruction. From 1810 on, Hastie literally took over all urban development projects in Russia. Hastie's immense contribution to designing public and private buildings in Tsarskoe Selo enabled him, in collaboration with the architect A.I. Ruska, to put together the two first editions of a catalogue of model private house facades in 1809-1812.

The 28th of December 1809, Emperor Alexander I, who had inspected Tsarskoe Selo several times, signed a decree awarding Collegiate Assessor W. Hastie the Order of St Vladimir 4th Degree. In 1817, the Russian government granted William Hastie and his survivors 'eternal ownership' of his mansion at 152 Moskovskaya ulitsa in Tsarskoe Selo, and a pension of 1500 roubles (although he did not have to retire). This notwithstanding, Hastie remained a citizen of Great Britain. William Hastie died the 4th of June 1832, and was buried at the Kazan Cemetery in Tsarskoe Selo.