Originally, it was a brainchild of the German/Russian astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, who would become its first director (in 1861, his son Otto Wilhelm von Struve succeeded him). The architect was Alexander Bryullov. The observatory was equipped with state-of-the-art devices, one of them being the a aperture refractor, one of the largest refractors in the world at that time (see Great Refractor). In 1885, the observatory was equipped with refractor, which was the biggest usable refractor in the world, until the telescope at the Lick Observatory in California a few years later. Both were built by Alvan Clark & Sons in Massachusetts.