Design and structure roof With the façade extending for along the eastern side of Red Square, the Upper Trading Rows were built between 1890 and 1893 by
Alexander Pomerantsev (responsible for architecture) and
Vladimir Shukhov (responsible for engineering). The trapezoidal building features a combination of elements of
Russian medieval architecture and a
steel framework and
glass roof, a similar style to the great 19th-century
railway stations of
London.
William Craft Brumfield described the GUM building as "a tribute both to Shukhov's design and to the technical proficiency of
Russian architecture toward the end of the 19th century". The glass-roofed design made the building unique at the time of construction. The roof, the diameter of which is , looks light, but it is a firm construction made of more than 50,000 metal pods (about ), capable of supporting snowfall accumulation. Illumination is provided by huge arched skylights of iron and glass, each weighing some and containing in excess of 20,000 panes of glass. The facade is divided into several horizontal tiers, lined with red Finnish granite,
Tarusa marble, and limestone. Each arcade is on three levels, linked by walkways of reinforced concrete.
History at the
Red Square Christmas Market Catherine II of Russia commissioned
Giacomo Quarenghi, a Neoclassical architect from Italy, to design a huge trade area along the east side of Red Square. However, that building was lost to the
1812 Fire of Moscow and replaced by trading rows designed by
Joseph Bove. In turn, the current structure opened in 1894, replacing Bove's. By the time of the
Russian Revolution of 1917, the building contained some 1,200
stores. After the Revolution, GUM was
nationalized. During the
NEP period (1921–28), however, GUM as a State Department Store operated as a model retail enterprise for consumers throughout Russia regardless of class, gender, and ethnicity. GUM's stores were used to further Bolshevik goals of rebuilding private enterprise along socialist lines and "democratizing consumption for workers and peasants nationwide". In the end, GUM's efforts to build
communism through
consumerism were unsuccessful and arguably "only succeeded in alienating consumers from state stores and instituting a culture of complaint and entitlement". GUM continued to be used as a department store until
Joseph Stalin converted it into office space in 1928 for the committee in charge of his first
Five Year Plan. After reopening as a department store in 1953, GUM became one of the few stores in the Soviet Union that did not have shortages of
consumer goods, and the
queues of shoppers were long, often extending entirely across Red Square. Several times during the 1960s and 1970s, the Second Secretary of the Communist Party
Mikhail Suslov, who hated having a department store facing
Lenin's Mausoleum, tried to convert GUM into an exhibition hall and museum showcasing the achievements of the Soviet Union and Communism, without the knowledge of General Secretary
Leonid Brezhnev. Each time, however, Brezhnev was tipped off and put a stop to such plans. At the end of the Soviet era, GUM was partially, then fully, privatized, and it had a number of owners before it ended up being owned by the supermarket company
Perekrestok. In May 2005, a 50.25% interest was sold to
Bosco di Ciliegi, a Russian
luxury goods distributor and boutique operator. As a private shopping mall, it was renamed in such a fashion that it could maintain its old acronym. The first word
gosudarstvennyj ('state') has been replaced with
glavnyj ('main'), so that GUM is now an abbreviation for "Main Universal Store". ==See also==