Court orders became a great stroke of luck for the St. Petersburg Metallichesky Zavod (Metal Plant, LMZ), a metal works that implemented a number of major projects and became a supplier to the Court of His Imperial Majesty. They opened up wide-ranging opportunities and were re- garded as something of a quality benchmark — the Emperor’s confidence was worth a great deal!

The lion’s share of the museum’s attic space is occupied by the rafter system. In the 1840s, there were fewer partitions and the premises were more spacious. The rafter system manufactured by the Aleksandrovsky Ironworks in 1838–39 suffered above some of the halls, damaged by snow and wind.

In 1887, Metal Plant, headed by the talented German engineer Otto Krel, won a large contract. The company undertook to manufacture and install new rafters and use girders to reinforce the old rafters, manufactured by the Aleksandrovsky Ironworks. The new structures weighed a total of more than nine thousand tonnes. Rails from the Putilov Factory were used to support the structures and to strengthen apertures in the walls.

“It’s interesting how old forged gird- ers were integrated with new rolled girders,” Sergey Matsenkov says. “Hundreds of screwjacks were used as linking components. Only the iron-bearing parts of the old, dismantled structures can be found on the walls in some of the attics.”

The rafters installed by workers from Metal Plant have remained in good condition. However, some minor improve- ments were introduced during the 20^th century including those in the course of the res- toration following the Great Patriotic War.

As the finale to that order, Metal Plant worked on the attic above the auditorium of the Hermitage Theater; a wooden rafter system had served there until 1895 – 1898. A new system was made of rolled elements — double-T beams and angles of various types and sizes; rivets or bolts were used at the joins.

“Workmen managed to create a genuine masterpiece of engineering,” Sergey Matsenkov believes. “The upper part of the attic space is entirely filled with an airy and light rafter system – it’s like a spider’s web. Multiple strings — iron bars — run down from the system and are followed by ceiling beams that hang from them. The rafters and floor structures of the auditorium form a single system.”

It was, however, a heating and ventilation system that became the most important project implemented by the St. Petersburg Metallichesky Zavod in the Winter Palace.

The heating and ventilation business had become one of the works’ focuses and appropriate diagrams and apparatus had been developed on Otto Krel’s initiative since the late 1860s. Five cast-iron furnaces, for example, were manufactured for the Our Lady of Vladimir Church and were followed by commissions for Vilnius Cathedral and the manège of the tsar’s stables.

“Efficient and convenient heating had al- ways been a problem for this enormous pal- ace building,” Sergey Matsenkov explains. “In 1895, an impelled-draft water-to-air heating and ventilation system — the most advanced of its day — was built in the northwestern risalto. It combined Ammosov’s hot-air heating concept, which had been used up to then, and hot-water radiators. All the work was done by the Metallichesky Zavod. A boiler room was built in a light well and hot water was pumped from it up to the attic, from where a piping system distributed the water to radiators across the residential premises. The residential premises were also supplied with hot air through conduits installed inside the walls. It was heated in cellars, in special brick chambers with cast-iron hot-air accordion heaters. The heaters circulated hot water supplied from the boiler room.”

Today, there is still a wooden chamber with an expansion tank of the water-to-air heating system that was developed by Metal Plant in 1905 to heat the Hermitage Theater and has remained in the attic above the theater lobby.

The attics of the Hermitage are a remark- able page – extensive and fascinating – in the history of LMZ , though veiled from the general public. Sergey Matsenkov hopes, however, that in time the museum will be able to accommodate displays and tours.

“Attic spaces are beautiful in their own way; their interiors seem to open up another dimension, adding to the existing image of the Hermitage,” he says. “Those who have already got to know this hidden side of the court’s life have come away with unforgettable impressions, having touched the past.”