How the Duma site changed the design of the Historical Museum

A decision by the Moscow City Duma in 1874 explains why the Historical Museum was built on Red Square: its members offered the museum land previously purchased for their own building. The change also shaped the architectural design. The architects had to plan a large public building within sight of the Kremlin, with a façade facing the square and foundations on difficult ground near the former course of the Neglinnaya River. Museum records trace three distinct stages: an early proposal beside the Kremlin wall, the transfer of the Duma plot and the 1875 competition design, ‘Fatherland’.

The allocated plot was occupied by the Zemsky Prikaz building, later known as the Main Pharmacy. Before the Duma’s decision, the museum was to be built along the Kremlin wall; the change of site affected an architectural design already under discussion. The Duma’s resolution explains the stated reason for transferring the land, while dated plans show how the building’s design changed afterwards.

How did the idea for the museum emerge before a site was chosen?

The decision to establish a history museum in Moscow was made in 1872, before its permanent site had been chosen. The idea emerged during preparations for the Sevastopol section of the All-Russian Polytechnic Exhibition: its organisers wanted to preserve the materials on the country's history that had been assembled for the temporary exhibition. Emperor Alexander II authorised the establishment of the museum on 9 February 1872; the museum regards this as its founding date.

The All-Russian Polytechnic Exhibition opened on 30 May 1872, after the imperial authorisation mentioned above. Its Sevastopol section displayed materials on the Crimean War and research at Chersonesus. After the temporary exhibition, the organisers still had to assemble a permanent collection and define the museum’s historical programme: the authorisation itself did not mean that a building had already been designed or a site chosen for it.

Alexander Zelenoy, who took part in the defence of Sevastopol and served as Minister of State Property, supported the petition for a museum; the museum’s founding chronology features an image of his memorandum bearing a resolution dated 9 February 1872 by the heir to the throne, Alexander Alexandrovich. It also names members of the governing board and scholarly commission, including the archaeologist Alexei Uvarov and the historian Ivan Zabelin. This record helps distinguish the date the museum was founded from the dates when its plans were approved and its exhibition opened.

Where was the museum originally going to be built?

In late 1873, a strip of land along the Kremlin wall was allocated for the museum. The State Historical Museum’s anniversary timeline places it between the Senate and Nikolskaya Towers, near the site of today’s Mausoleum; in I. V. Klyushkina’s study the original site is described more broadly, as lying between the Spasskaya and Nikolskaya Towers. Both sources agree that Sherwood’s first design, from 1874, was sited along the wall; the exact boundaries of the site need to be checked against the plan itself. The northern end of the square was not the only location the organisers considered.

This detail changes how the surviving designs should be read. If an early drawing shows a building along the wall, it cannot be taken as an initial version of the present façade with minor decorative changes. The site determines the building’s position in relation to the Kremlin and the approaches to the square. Moving to a different site required a new approach to the building’s overall form and its sides facing the city. The early design is recorded in the museum’s anniversary history; the need to revise it follows from the difference between the two building sites.

On 13 December 1873, the organisers discussed the architectural appearance of the planned building. Uvarov proposed taking the churches of Suzdal and the palace of Andrei Bogolyubsky as models; Zabelin regarded these examples as essentially Romanesque and insisted on architecture of the 16th century. According to the State Historical Museum’s anniversary chronology, the commission backed the historian’s view and chose the Cathedral of the Intercession and monuments of the 16th and 17th centuries as its models. The discussion took place before the City Duma’s land was transferred; after the site changed, the design process began anew.

Which older building made way for the museum?

On the north side of Red Square stood the Zemsky Prikaz building, later known as the Main Pharmacy. Built in 1699–1701, it housed several institutions before the city gave the site to the museum. The choice of location brought a new landmark, but also meant the loss of a building from the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. A historical and cultural account published on the city portal, explicitly links its demolition to the construction of the museum.

According to this document, the old building was two storeys high, with a tower and window surrounds in the Naryshkin Baroque style. The Zemsky Prikaz occupied it first; later, part of the premises was given to the Main Pharmacy. Moscow University opened within these walls in 1755 and moved to Mokhovaya Street in 1793. The building later housed municipal offices. This was no “empty plot for a museum”, but a site with its own institutional history. Its transfer led to the loss of the earlier building.

The city’s heritage record mentions an unrealised plan to preserve the Zemsky Prikaz in the museum courtyard and dates its demolition to 1875. The State Historical Museum’s anniversary chronology places the start of demolition in June 1874 and ‘Moscow Heritage’ publishes a photograph of the work from that same year. Demolition was already under way in 1874; the sources differ on the year of demolition and give no exact date for its completion. The old building made way for the museum.

The published photograph of the demolition still shows the main body of the Main Pharmacy. The journal cites a 1874 resolution by the Moscow Architectural Society: its members called for detailed drawings of the old building and for its tiles and carved stone elements to be carefully preserved. Contemporaries regarded the building as a monument and sought to preserve a record of it. The photograph captures its exterior during the work, but cannot reveal the concealed parts of its structure.

A few pieces of the original decoration have survived. The page for a museum exhibition on the history of Moscow University features a multicoloured relief tile dating from 1699–1701, from the exterior decoration of the Zemsky Prikaz and Main Pharmacy. The museum describes it as a stylised flower rosette in turquoise, blue, yellow and white. The exhibition ran in 2024–2025; its page documents the object but does not indicate that it is currently on display. This small detail gives a clearer idea of the architecture replaced in the 1870s.

There is no reason to assume that the exterior of the new building must echo its predecessor. The tile confirms the decoration of the old building; Sherwood’s design belongs to a different building with a different brief. The continuity of the site is established, but a claim that the specific rosette was borrowed for the museum façade would require a comparison of drawings and descriptions of the architect’s intentions. This is the distinction between the site’s historical memory and the artistic interpretation of the new museum.

Why did the City Duma give up land it had bought for itself?

The transfer of the City Duma’s plot to the Historical Museum began with a resolution of 16 April 1874: the city offered the museum land on Red Square that it had previously bought from the state treasury for a Duma building. According to the wording published by the State Historical Museum, the deputies thanked the heir to the throne for choosing Moscow as the site of the new institution and declared their willingness to donate “the best site”. This is the reason stated by those involved in the decision; without further records, any speculation about the Duma’s hidden motives would be conjecture.

The museum’s chronology records the city deputies’ resolution of 16 April 1874 and the Tsesarevich’s rescript of 1 May agreeing to accept the plot. Citing a file in the Russian State Historical Archive, I. V. Klyushkina dates the notarised acceptance of the donation to 21 June 1874. The excerpt she quotes mentions land by the Iverskiye Gate and the government offices building that stood on it. These three steps preceded the 1875 ‘Fatherland’ competition.

The museum’s proximity to the former City Duma building today can be misleading. The city transferred the Duma plot referred to in the 1874 decision to the new institution. The Moscow City Duma’s own building was erected later, on another site near the Resurrection Gate. The building that stands there today is therefore no evidence that the 1874 plan was carried out unchanged. The museum’s chronology mentions both buildings separately, along with the gate that later linked them in an architectural ensemble.

The City Duma acquired its own building after the neighbouring institution had opened. In 1888, a competition was announced for Voskresenskaya Square; Dmitry Chichagov won with a design bearing the motto “Cedo majori”. The new building was consecrated on 1 May 1892, according to a Moscow historical and cultural reference. This sequence rules out the simple notion that the museum took a site beside an existing Duma building: in 1874, the city deputies gave up the land, and the museum’s architectural neighbour appeared later.

The reference notes that Chichagov combined decorative forms drawn from ancient Russian architecture with Neo-Renaissance interiors, and that the red colour of the façade was chosen in the final stages of construction. The similar colouring and historicist styles of the two neighbouring buildings do not mean they shared an architect or arose from the same competition: Sherwood and Semyonov designed the museum in 1875, while the future City Duma building was designed following the competition of 1888.

How did the design competition turn the new site into a building plan?

The ‘Fatherland’ competition design for the Historical Museum was prepared for a site the City Duma had already selected: the closed competition was announced in mid-November 1874, with entries due by 1 May 1875. Sherwood and Semyonov were not the only participants; the museum’s chronology also names Alexander Kaminsky, Lev Dahl, Nikolai Shokhin and other architects. The sequence of dates matters: the city first offered the site, then the architects competed to design the museum.

In the State Historical Museum’s anniversary chronology shows the competition design for the façade facing Red Square, bearing the motto ‘Fatherland’, dated 1875 and signed by Sherwood and Semyonov; it also reproduces the approved design for the façade facing Voskresenskaya Square from the same year. These drawings show different stages and views; they confirm that the design was refined after the competition. To identify changes to particular windows or tented roofs, images of the same side must be compared.

The museum publication also shows other drawings: the competition design for the façade facing Voskresenskaya Square, the side façade along Kremlyovsky Proyezd, and the ground-floor plan. Together, they reveal the architects’ task more clearly than the familiar view alone. The large museum building could be seen from several approaches, and the competition drawings treated it as a building with multiple faces in the cityscape. These drawings alone, however, do not establish which view mattered most to the committee.

In its biographical account of Sherwood, the State Historical Museum says that the artist produced his first design in 1874 and a second, later built, in 1875. This fits with the change of site and the competition’s chronology, but the museum does not suggest a simple chain of cause and effect in which ‘the Duma’s decision automatically gave rise to the Russian style’. The site determined the building’s position and the conditions for construction. The choice of architectural style also reflected the designers’ views and the museum’s brief.

Why was the façade designed in the style of early Russian architecture?

According to Moscow heritage protection record, the competition rules required the museum to be designed in the forms of traditional Russian architecture and to harmonise with the ensemble of Red Square. Vladimir Sherwood gave this brief his own interpretation: the museum’s account of the artist conveys his view of the building as an expression of ‘popular and public consciousness’. The architecture of the Historical Museum on Red Square belongs to the Russian style of the second half of the 19th century: its designers made this choice deliberately.

At the northern entrance, the new building had to stand alongside the Kremlin towers and the Cathedral of the Intercession at the opposite end of the ensemble. Sherwood drew on recognisable forms of medieval Russian architecture, while designing a public building for his own time, with large halls and a complex structural system. The similar silhouettes help bring the ensemble together visually, but they do not make the museum façade an authentic medieval structure.

The Duma’s 1874 resolution concerns the transfer of land; it says nothing about towers or decoration. The requirement for the museum to harmonise with the square’s ensemble was set out in the competition rules, while Sherwood and Semyonov developed the façade’s specific design. The resolution explains the choice of site; the drawings from 1875 show the architects’ solution.

The surviving building has a red-brick mass, tall tent roofs and a regular sequence of window openings. These are elements of a 19th-century historicist design. A Moscow publication on civic architecture describes the building as unplastered brick and places it in the Neo-Russian style. Identifying the precise source of each ornament would require comparing the drawings with the historic building in question; a superficial resemblance to the Kremlin or the Cathedral of the Intercession is not enough to establish that a detail was borrowed.

The main façade faces Red Square. Two tall towers define its silhouette, an elaborately decorated porch marks the principal entrance, and smaller towers stand on either side. The heritage description identifies recessed panels, colonnettes, cornices and kokoshniks as elements of the decorative vocabulary chosen by the designers. These terms offer a way to examine the façade in detail: to find its recurring small recesses and projections, distinguish the horizontal band from the tent roofs, and see how the entrance stands out within the building as a whole.

The building has other façades, too. A city heritage guide describes the façade facing present-day Manezhnaya Square as less ceremonial in its composition, though richly detailed in its decoration. The towers feature motifs resembling machicolations — projecting structures with openings through which defenders could fire downwards in fortress architecture. Here, they are a decorative reference to the past, not evidence that this nineteenth-century museum building had a defensive purpose. The differences between the façades reflect the building’s position on its site and the various ways people approach it through the city.

According to the heritage listing, the central towers facing Red Square and Manezhnaya Square are crowned with double-headed eagles, while the side towers bear figures of lions and unicorns. The museum’s chronology credits Alexander Popov and Anatoly Semyonov with the design of the heraldic sculptures and banners. The building’s visible decoration therefore cannot all be attributed to the authors of the 1875 competition drawing.

The finished façade did not reproduce every aspect of the original design. A city document states that the building was not clad in polychrome glazed tiles because of the cost. This is an important distinction when reading the drawing: the watercolour design shows what the architects intended, while the museum building reflects the decisions made and the financial constraints they faced. Even if colourful decoration appears on the surviving drawing, we cannot assume that passers-by saw it that way in 1883.

A comparison with the lost Main Pharmacy building is particularly revealing here, but it has its limits. The old building did have multicoloured tiles on its exterior, one of which has been documented by the museum. Polychrome cladding was planned for the new building but never installed. These two facts do not establish that Sherwood intended to reproduce the pharmacy’s decoration. They can be compared as two different approaches to colour on the same site, without claiming a proven artistic influence between them.

Where did the artistic and museum plans differ?

Those behind the museum wanted its galleries to tell the story of different historical eras, but they had differing views on the roles of original objects and decoration. Sherwood placed great importance on bringing architecture, painting and sculpture together. A museum text on his work explicitly notes that, in his vision, historical objects complemented images created by artists. For the archaeologist Uvarov, a systematic presentation of historical artefacts remained essential: in his plan, originals, copies and casts were to create a picture of each era.

Uvarov drafted the museum’s first charter. In the museum’s biography of the scholar, articles from the document on ‘visual history’ and the chronological arrangement of historical artefacts are cited. This helps explain why the building’s design was discussed both as architecture and as a plan for the exhibition. The gallery needed space and light, while its decoration had to help visitors interpret the objects. This was a practical challenge for the museum, not merely a debate over the style of the façade.

The State Historical Museum’s chronology records that in 1873 Uvarov devised a scholarly plan assigning a historical period to each gallery on the first and second floors. He envisaged decoration that reflected the era of the objects displayed there. The museum’s spaces became part of the way it explained history, although the galleries’ contents went beyond their decoration. This approach linked the building’s exterior appearance to the journey through historical eras inside, without treating the two as identical.

The disagreements among those involved in the project should not be turned into a scene with precisely reconstructed dialogue. The museum confirms that the building’s appearance was discussed in December 1873 and that Uvarov resigned in 1878 amid fundamental differences, but these two accounts do not establish a single cause for every subsequent decision. To understand the completed building, it is enough to recognise that it was created by an artist, an engineer and scholars with different professional aims.

Design work continued after the competition. In the State Historical Museum’s anniversary chronology, the competition façade drawings appear alongside a ground-floor plan and approved cross-sections from 1875–1876. These document the museum building’s layout and structure, not just its silhouette. The date on a drawing does not prove that everything shown had already been built by then.

The distinction between the competition façade drawing, the approved façade drawing and the construction drawings is useful when assessing the building. The first presented an artistic and spatial proposal. The approved drawing recorded the agreed design. The plans and sections clarified the rooms and structure. Captions to the images published by the State Historical Museum confirm that these stages existed, although the titles of the drawings alone cannot tell us which dimensions or partitions changed between versions.

How was the scholarly programme reflected in the first galleries?

In the first galleries, Alexei Uvarov’s vision took shape through a sequence of historical periods, a selection of objects and the design of the rooms. The museum’s charter, drafted in 1873 and approved on 2 August 1874, defined its purpose as telling the story of history through objects visitors could see. It allowed originals, copies and casts, arranged chronologically. Visitors were thus invited to explore the past through objects, while the architectural decoration helped them distinguish one period from another. Uvarov’s Museum Biography clarifies: for the opening, preparations focused chiefly on the earliest periods of history — from the Stone Age to Kievan Rus’; the entire proposed chronology could not be displayed at once.

The collections for this programme were assembled while the building was under construction. Uvarov donated stone tools from Volosovo and Karacharovo, along with a collection of Caucasian bronzes that marked the start of the museum’s collection records. In 1881, he proposed a programme for building its archaeological collections; objects also came from universities, learned societies and private donors. This explains why decisions about the rooms cannot be separated from the scholars’ work: the exhibition needed space for collections from different periods and a clear order in which to display them. The donated tools are historical objects with their own provenance, unlike a decorative image of a tool on a wall.

The distinction is clear in the first gallery. In the museum’s current description, it is devoted to the Early and Middle Palaeolithic. There, the section on the interior explains that a pit-and-comb pattern resembling the decoration on Neolithic pottery was chosen for the cornice and mosaic floor. Craftsmen from Sedov’s artel laid the mosaics, while sculptor Georgy Chizhov made the stucco work. This detail needs careful interpretation: Neolithic pottery belongs to a different stage of the Stone Age from the Palaeolithic named in the gallery’s title. The pattern is an artistic evocation of antiquity, not an artefact that dates every object in the gallery.

The second hall reveals another layer of the museum’s story. According to the State Historical Museum’s description, its artistic programme was developed with Uvarov’s involvement; Viktor Vasnetsov created the painted frieze “The Stone Age” for its walls, completing it by the end of 1884. The plaster frame and mosaic floor echo motifs from Neolithic pottery, while the window reliefs evoke stone tools and points. The painted frieze helps visitors imagine the past, but it does not depict a specific archaeological find in the way an object in a display case does. The date the painting was completed also shows that the public opening in June 1883 did not mean that every decorative detail was finished.

These halls bring together the two aims that shaped discussions about the museum’s appearance: to display surviving objects and to give visitors a sense of each historical period. For a historian, it is essential to distinguish their value as evidence. A stone tool can be studied as a material source; an ornament chosen by the architect and a painting by Vasnetsov tell us primarily how nineteenth-century scholars and artists imagined the ancient past. The descriptions of the halls show the outcome of this programme, but they do not establish that every detail mentioned was in place when the museum opened.

What challenges did the site itself pose for the builders?

On the new site, the builders had to contend with the slope of Borovitsky Hill and the ground near the culverted Neglinnaya River. The museum’s chronology records the building’s dimensions — 117 metres long and 52 metres wide — and lists the work done to reinforce the corner by Kremlyovsky Proyezd and Voskresenskaya Square. The builders used oak foundation beams, cement mixed with crushed brick, and rubble masonry. These details show how the site directly shaped the engineering work.

The Neglinnaya River was enclosed in a culvert in 1818, long before the museum’s foundation was laid. In the 1870s, builders had to reinforce the corner of the building near the former riverbed, rather than drain an open river. The museum’s chronology lists the materials used for reinforcement but gives no figure for the amount of ground settlement, so it cannot be estimated from this information.

The foundation stone was laid on 20 August 1875. Alexander II personally placed a brick in the building’s foundations; the museum also cites newspaper reports from the time. In February 1876, the museum’s administration signed a contract with Semyonov and Sherwood to complete construction by 1 September 1879. The maximum cost of the work, excluding interior decoration, was set at 1.1 million roubles. This deadline should not be confused with the museum’s opening to the public in 1883.

The same chronology shows that funding proved difficult: at the time, the institution was not state-run in the modern sense and depended on donations and its own resources. Construction resumed in 1881, during preparations for the coronation of Alexander III. This pause explains why the building, begun in 1875, did not open by the deadline set in the construction contract. Without a complete cost estimate, the delay cannot be attributed solely to the cost of stabilising the ground.

When did the completed museum open to visitors?

On 27 May 1883, Alexander III and Maria Feodorovna visited the Historical Museum during the coronation celebrations. The museum’s account of Uvarov states that it opened to the public on 2 June 1883, after a prayer service. The city guide Moscow as It Is gives 9 June as the day visitors first saw its halls, while the State Historical Museum’s anniversary chronology and a publication by the Russian Federation’s Commission for UNESCO also give 2 June. The reason for the discrepancy is not explained. The imperial family’s visit and the opening to the general public were separate events.

In 1883, some of the planned rooms were still unfinished. In 1886, the state treasury allocated 100,000 roubles to complete construction. The museum’s chronology dates the opening of the auditorium designed by Semyonov to 12 November 1889; work on the halls devoted to the eras of Ivan the Terrible, Boris Godunov and the Time of Troubles continued after further funding was allocated in 1900. The public museum continued to take shape after its first ceremonial opening. This matters when looking at old images of the interiors: photographs from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries capture different stages of the work.

By 1883, the museum building stood at the northern end of Red Square, on the site proposed by the City Duma in 1874. The State Historical Museum gives 1875–1883 as the period covering its construction and opening; some murals and ancillary rooms were completed later.

What can be verified from the building itself and the sources?

First, it helps to distinguish between three images: the early 1874 design along the Kremlin wall, the 1875 competition façade facing Red Square, submitted under the title ‘Fatherland’, and the approved façade facing Voskresenskaya Square from the same year. The museum’s chronology and the captions accompanying the published drawings establish their sequence. To identify a specific change in form between the competition entry and the approved design, one would need to compare images of the same façade; descriptions alone are insufficient.

Next, look at the building as it stands today, first from the square and then from the approach to the Resurrection Gate. This change of viewpoint helps explain why the State Historical Museum’s anniversary publication shows designs for several façades. What the records establish is that the architects prepared drawings for different sides of the building. Which view makes the stronger impression is a matter of personal observation, not a conclusion drawn from the archives.

The answer to why the museum stands here lies in two dates: in late 1873, a site along the wall was under consideration; on 16 April 1874, the City Duma proposed land at the northern end of the square. A design competition, the laying of the foundation stone and construction followed. The museum thus helps us see how the layout of Red Square itself changed in the nineteenth century, beyond the story of a single successful façade. This account is supported by the City Duma’s resolution reproduced in the museum’s publication, dated drawings and the construction chronology.

You can explore the northern part of Red Square, the exterior of the State Historical Museum and its setting beside GUM on the Red Square walking tour ‘Heart of the Capital’. The route description also mentions Varvarka Street and Vasilyevsky Spusk; a visit to the museum’s halls is not listed in the programme.

Sources

1. State Historical Museum — the history of its building
2. State Historical Museum: 150 Years. A Timeline of 1872–1883
3. State Historical Museum: Vladimir Osipovich Sherwood and the Building Design
4. State Historical Museum: A. S. Uvarov’s Biography and the Founding of the Museum
5. Moscow Heritage: Moscow’s Civic Architecture
6. Radius: ‘Heart of the Capital’ Route
7. Municipal Historical and Cultural Overview of the Historical Museum and Its Site
8. State Historical Museum: An Exhibition on the History of Moscow University and a Tile from the Zemsky Prikaz
9. State Historical Museum: Hall 1, the Stone Age Exhibition and the Hall’s Historic Interior
10. State Historical Museum: Hall 2, decorative programme and Vasnetsov’s ‘The Stone Age’ frieze
11. Moscow Heritage magazine: dismantling of the Main Pharmacy building
12. Municipal historical and cultural assessment of the ensemble by the Resurrection Gate: the Moscow City Duma building
13. Commission of the Russian Federation for UNESCO: the history of the State Historical Museum
14. I. V. Klyushkina. Heraldic Symbols of Russian Statehood in the Architectural and Artistic Decoration of the State Historical Museum