Krasnoye Selo (, lit.
beautiful village), that gave it name to the district and Krasnoselskaya Street, existed since Middle Ages east of present-day
Kazansky Rail Terminal. It was separated from Moscow by a swamp around extinct Olkhovets Creek; construction of dams on the creek created a large pond that occupied present-day site of
Yaroslavsky Rail Terminal and smaller ponds downstream. In the 17th century, Russian military set up a fortified
armoury west of the pond, on site of
Leningradsky Rail Terminal, exceeding twenty
hectares; it blew up during the
1812 fire of Moscow and was abandoned. Accounts of a royal palace placed north of the pond are, likely, not true, however, young tsar Peter I, who was raised in nearby Preobrazhenskoye, used to ride boats on the pond. , with
roundhouse and yards, and the pond on Olkhovets Creek In 1851, the state completed the first mainline railroad from
St. Petersburg to Moscow, and set up the extant terminal building, designed by
Konstantin Thon, west of the pond. This remote site was chosen due to high costs of land in the city and fear of accidental fire. More railroads followed with
Yaroslavsky Rail Terminal (1862, rebuilt in the 1900s by
Fyodor Schechtel and expanded by
Lev Kekushev),
Kazansky Rail Terminal (1864, rebuilt in the 1910s by
Alexey Shchusev and expanded after
World War II), and the line leading to
Kursky Rail Terminal (1870s) with its own station on an
overpass. The pond was filled only in the 1900s, in line with Schectel's project. New terminals were inevitably encircled with rail yards, workshops, warehouses and connecting lines, thus over a half of Krasnoselsky District is now occupied by railroad facilities. In 1935, the first line of
Moscow Metro reached Komsomolskaya Square; its service yard was placed east of Yaroslavsky Terminal. At the same time Commissariat of Railroads took over the lands between the terminals and
Garden Ring and set up an ambitious office construction program, starting with
Ivan Fomin's
constructivist "Tank Engine Building", which still houses the headquarters of
Russian Railways. In 1947–1952, Railways acquired two
skyscrapers—a mixed residential and office tower in Red Gates Square and
Hilton Moscow Leningradskaya Hotel in Komsomoskaya Square. In the 1980s, the blocks north-west from these two towers were torn down and rebuilt with
Leonid Brezhnev-era high-rise offices. Former Domnikovskaya Street in this office compound, widened to 8–10 lanes, is now named after
Andrei Sakharov. ==Economy==