Oil Boom: First Master Plans, Rapid Urbanization, and Remarkable Architectural Beauty

The Nobel brothers launched the world’s first oil tanker, “Zoroaster” (1878), and created the Villa Petrolea company town. The Rothschild family controlled 40-42% of exports and financed the Baku-Batumi railway.

Azerbaijani oil barons: Taghiyev funded the first Muslim girls’ school and a freshwater system; Mukhtarov built Gothic “Palace of Happiness”; 49 of 167 entrepreneurs were Azerbaijani.

Polish architects Józef Gosławski and Józef Płoszko created Gothic, Baroque, Neoclassical, and Art Nouveau buildings with Islamic motifs in golden limestone - “Baku Eclecticism” architecture.

Electric lighting, telephone connections (1886), streetcars, the Baku Boulevard (1909), European-style mansions, theatres, and infrastructure created a cosmopolitan metropolis. Azerbaijanis, Russians, Armenians, Jews, Poles, Germans, Swedes, French, and British created a multilingual international oil capital.

Baku Oil Boom in Numbers: 11 million tons annual production (1901), more than 50 % of global oil production, population growth from 7,400 (1850) to 248,000 (1918), more than 3,000+ oil wells by 1900, 167 oil companies by 1901, 833 km Baku-Batumi pipeline (1907).