Each island of Saint Petersburg, just as any island should, for that matter, has a unique character of its own. If we are to simplify this down to a single word, then the Zayachiy Island is historical, the Krestovsky Island is the one with high-end housing, Elagin is the green one, Kamenny is neoclassical, and Petrovsky is business class. There are also “industrial” islands – blind spots on the map of the city because either it takes a long time to get there or these are restricted areas because there is still some production going on behind the red-brick walls of the factory buildings. These islands seem to live a life of their own; year after year they figure in architectural students’ diploma projects, and make the lists of nontrivial tourist places of interest. However, it was only after the Western High-speed Diameter was built that the chance for successful gentrification of the Gutuevsky Island became a realistic prospect. Which, sadly, cannot be said about the neighboring Kanonersky Island – the new traffic artery only added to its entropy.

At a glance, the Gutuevsky Island looks like it is unfit for housing construction, yet, the deeper you delve into its toponymical history, the more your imagination unfolds. For years, the island lay empty, which is evidenced by its first historical names: Nezaselenniy (literally “Desert”), Kustarnikoviy (literally “Bushy”). In the middle of the XVIII century, it was bought out by the shipbuilder Conon Hugtunen; they moved over a whole trade port from Kronstadt to this place, still active today, and life started bustling. Hotels and restaurants were opening, as well the Merchant Eliseevs Warehouses, a sewing mill, a cotton-spinning factory, a brewery – all these were fine specimens of red-brick architecture, recognized as cultural heritage sites, authored, among other architects, by Julius Benoît and Konstantin Niman, who built the famous Pel Drugstore.