Architect Pomerantsev knew how to please the Muscovites’ tastes. The exterior was drafted in the fanciest back then “Russian style.” The inside was built according to the European mainstream: as a passage, i.e., with stores located along a corridor beneath the skylight. Everything inside was built with state-of-the-art technology: reinforced concrete, elevators, and even, hard to believe it, iron structures. The ceiling was designed by Vladimir Shukhov, who would later build the Shabolovka tower.
More than a thousand stores, approximately 4.2 thousand square sazhens of retail space. All there for the trading. After the revolution, trading fell out of fashion, and the building was handed over to the proliferating government offices. It was not until 1953 that shopping really started. The GUM’s time has begun.
