What remains of the 1923 exhibition in Gorky Park: a pavilion and traces of its layout

What survives in Gorky Park from the 1923 All-Russian Agricultural and Handicraft Exhibition is the Hexagon pavilion (originally called ‘Machines and Implements’), along with the routes of certain paths and the positions of open squares. The former Handicrafts Pavilion building, listed as part of this legacy in the heritage protection document, was demolished in 2025. The answer therefore depends on the date of the document and on what counts as surviving: a purpose-built exhibition structure, a repeatedly altered former factory building, or the underlying layout of the park.

The histories of these two buildings are especially revealing. The Hexagon was built specifically for the exhibition; the Handicrafts Pavilion was created inside a former factory building. Both survived beyond 1923, but each underwent a different series of alterations and met a different fate. A comparison of the historical and cultural assessment report, materials from Garage Museum and reports of the demolition explains why the historical list of buildings differs from what stands on the site today.

Where was the 1923 exhibition held, and how is it connected to the park?

The exhibition occupied land beside Krymsky Val and the Moskva River, above all Orlov Meadow. The present-day park took shape later and includes areas with different histories. The decision to hold the first All-Russian Agricultural and Handicraft Exhibition was made in late 1922. According to the state historical and cultural assessment, riverside land was allocated for it from the area around Krymsky Bridge towards Neskuchny Garden, including sites near former hospital estates.

The park’s official history describes a rubbish dump on Orlov Meadow. Researchers Marianna Evstratova and Sergei Koluzakov, however, paint a more complex picture of the area near Krymsky Val: before the revolution, it had factory buildings, apartment houses, hospital kitchen gardens and a river embankment. The account of a dump cannot simply be applied to every part of the future exhibition site. This matters for the Handicrafts Pavilion: it was created within an existing factory building.

Alexei Shchusev was appointed chief architect of the exhibition; Ivan Zholtovsky served on the Construction Commission, and Vyacheslav Oltarzhevsky was deputy chief architect. The exhibition opened on 19 August 1923 and ran until October. The site did not empty all at once after it closed: according to the assessment report, some pavilions remained in use, and the grounds served as a park. This helps explain why some temporary structures survived until the next phase of development, although the exhibition ensemble as a whole did not.

In March 1928, the Moscow City Council decided to establish a park of culture and recreation on the former exhibition grounds. The park’s official chronology dates the opening to 12 August 1928 and cites a newspaper announcement published the day before. A 2012 Garage Museum press release gives 1 June, but Vechernyaya Moskva refers to its own report dated the 13th, written after the event. Contemporary publications confirm 12 August. The park was named after Maxim Gorky in 1932. The exhibition, the opening of the park of culture and recreation, and its renaming were three separate events.

How did an exhibition town take shape in just a few months?

Garage Museum gives the precise date of the resolution authorising the exhibition: 19 October 1922. Ten months remained before the opening on 19 August 1923, during which the organisers had to prepare the land, install utilities and build the pavilions. According to the account in Alexei Shchusev’s archive, more than 250 buildings and ancillary structures were erected on the site. That figure covers the entire construction project, not just the exhibition halls. The scale and speed of the work help explain why most pavilions were designed as temporary structures.

The documents distinguish roles that can easily become conflated under a single name in later accounts. Alexei Shchusev was chief architect, Ivan Zholtovsky developed the master plan, and the museum’s account names Alexander Kuznetsov as chief structural engineer. Other architects and artists were responsible for individual pavilions. This division of work explains why the author of the overall plan was not necessarily responsible for every façade or subsequent alteration on the site. The distinction is especially important for the Handicrafts Pavilion: Zholtovsky’s master plan and the drawings for adapting the factory building answer different questions.

Why can’t the master plan be treated as a snapshot of the exhibition?

Even the 1923 layout was not simply the execution of a single drawing. The expert account of the park’s history states that Ivan Zholtovsky’s design was adopted as the basis in autumn 1922: a formal, symmetrical area was to give way to a freer landscaped section, with the main axis running parallel to the Moskva River. During construction, the circulation plan was implemented with substantial changes. The competition design therefore reveals the architect’s intentions, but without further evidence it cannot show the route visitors actually took on 19 August 1923.

The difference between the design and the exhibition as built matters when assessing what survives. A present-day path cannot be identified as either a remnant of 1923 or a later addition simply by comparing it with Zholtovsky’s sketch. First, it is necessary to establish whether the route existed by opening day, then examine changes made when the park was created and during later reconstructions. The assessment report identifies broad continuity in some routes, rather than the uninterrupted survival of every metre of paving.

The history of the Hexagon pavilion: what remains from 1923?

Of the buildings created for the 1923 exhibition, the Hexagon remains the most significant physical witness. Garage Museum describes it as the only exhibition pavilion built using reinforced concrete: the other purpose-built pavilions were predominantly wooden and have not survived as their original exhibition buildings. In 1923, the complex was called ‘Machines and Implements’ and belonged to the ‘Mechanical Engineering’ section. The name ‘Hexagon’ became established much later.

The building’s plan explains its name better than a glance at its façade. Six wings surround an inner courtyard; their overall geometry is clear in a drawing by Ivan Zholtovsky published by the museum. For the exhibition, this arrangement created a series of halls around an open space. The museum also holds a photograph of the courtyard from 1923. Comparing the plan with the photograph provides documentary evidence of the pavilion’s design, without treating the later brick walls as part of the original scheme.

After the decision to create the park, the building was adapted to serve as its Main Dining Hall. According to the building history published by Garage Museum, lightweight walls separated three wings from the courtyard, kitchens were installed in two, and toilets were built in the spaces between the wings. At first, the dining hall operated in summer. In the late 1930s, the wings were enclosed in brick so it could be used year-round. Its new purpose helped preserve the building, though it also changed its appearance.

In the early 1960s, part of the building was used to make lemonade; later it housed a café, a restaurant and a dance floor. After years of neglect and several fires, the pavilion became structurally unsafe. These changes do not erase its origins, but they rule out describing it as untouched. The historic building and its legible layout survive; its form and exterior have undergone numerous alterations. The museum’s plans for its future use do not establish that restoration is complete or that visitors can freely enter the building on any given day.

Which parts of the Hexagon were structural, and which were decorative?

The Hexagon’s heritage description helps identify more precisely which parts have survived. According to the 2021 expert assessment report, the protected features approved in January 2019 include the building’s location, six double-height rectangular volumes linked by single-storey galleries, the spatial arrangement of the interiors, load-bearing columns and beams, and the basin of the 1923 pool in the courtyard. This list distinguishes the verifiable architectural core from later doors, partitions and exterior cladding. The inclusion of a feature in the heritage designation does not mean it remains technically unchanged.

The pavilion’s frame consisted of slender reinforced-concrete columns and horizontal beams; wooden roof trusses were used above the double-height spaces. Single-storey galleries surrounded the six tall halls, whose interiors originally opened onto the courtyard. In describing the structure, the reinforced-concrete frame must be distinguished from the timber: the pavilion was exceptional among the exhibition buildings for its use of reinforced concrete, but it also contained wooden elements. Later, walls enclosed the galleries and wings for use as a dining hall, so visitors in the 1930s experienced the space differently.

The engineering work faced difficult conditions. The expert assessment report describes marshy ground and a high water table; special foundations incorporating concrete were designed for the heavy pavilion. It names engineer N. V. Andreev as responsible for construction and gives the building time as one and a half months. These details show the project’s engineering constraints: the builders had to erect a large structure on a difficult site to a tight schedule. The report does not, however, establish that all the present foundations are fully accessible for inspection or that the underground structure has never been altered.

Can the building’s present appearance reveal its artistic design in 1923?

Not completely: the expert assessment report explicitly records the loss of the tall volumes’ original pitched roofs. In 1923, the walls were painted grey, while panels by Alexandra Exter and Ignaty Nivinsky decorated the gables and upper parts of the end walls. A circular fountain stood in the centre of the courtyard. The pool basin included among the protected features links the present layout to the original design, but the panels and roofs cannot automatically be counted among the surviving elements. Our knowledge of the original decoration comes from documents, not from the dining hall’s later appearance.

The report also offers a telling example of the limits of what is known: from drawings and old photographs, the experts suggestthat modular wooden shutters may have covered the rectangular windows on both floors to control the light. The document does not present this arrangement as an established fact. Even a detailed conservation assessment does not justify treating a hypothesis as a proven decision by the architect. The layout of the rooms is better documented than the way light was controlled for a particular display.

The building appears under different names in the records. In the context of the 1923 exhibition, Garage Museum calls it the ‘Machines and Implements’ pavilion in the ‘Mechanical Engineering’ section, while the official title of a 2021 report uses ‘Mechanisation’. According to a published historical account and the same report, the name ‘Hexagon’ became attached to the dining hall in 1935. That name makes the building easy to identify, but a caption for a 1923 photograph would be more accurate if it used the name in the museum archive. The six-part layout was there from the start; the familiar name came later.

Another pavilion from 1923, Konstantin Melnikov’s ‘Makhorka’, helps convey the scale of what has been lost. Garage Museum’s materials describe it as a striking example of the exhibition’s temporary architecture; the building has not survived. Comparing it with the ‘Hexagon’ shows what happened to the structures themselves, rather than suggesting that one design was artistically superior: the wooden ‘Makhorka’ is known through archives, while Zholtovsky’s reinforced-concrete complex can be studied as a historic building.

Two further milestones in the building’s legal status appear in the records. According to the museum’s account, the pavilion was placed under state protection in 1999; the list of protected architectural features was approved in January 2019, and the expert report discussed in this article is dated September 2021. These dates concern the legal and scholarly documentation of the heritage site. The documents say nothing about whether restoration has been completed or whether the interiors are accessible.

Why was the Handicrafts Pavilion also included in the list of surviving buildings?

In the historical inventory included in the heritage protection report, the former Handicrafts Pavilion is recorded as a converted building of Nikolai Bromley’s factory near Krymsky Bridge. The original building was constructed in 1893–1895 to a design by Sergei Sherwood. It was adapted for a new purpose for the 1923 exhibition and subsequently rebuilt several times. An expert report on the park, prepared for a landing-stage project and signed on 8 August 2025, includes the former Handicrafts Pavilion in its historical inventory of valuable buildings on the site. This record of the building’s origins does not establish that it was still standing when the report was signed: its dismantling had already been documented in January 2025.

The study ‘9/45 Krymsky Val: An Unknown Monument of Gorky Park’ reconstructs the sequence of events. The future pavilion began as a workshop in that factory near Krymsky Val. Zholtovsky’s original competition proposal called for the old building to be removed to make way for an esplanade. Shchusev proposed adapting it for the handicrafts section. A key decision in 1923, then, was to use the existing walls instead of building from scratch.

The Garage Museum archive contains a photograph of the conversion of the Bromley factory workshop dated 1923; the archive record explicitly links the design of the Handicrafts Pavilion to Alexei Shchusev’s project. The publication ‘9/45 Krymsky Val’ reproduces his sketches alongside work by Andrei Snigaryov and photographs of the façades. These provide a firmer basis for identifying the architect behind this particular conversion than a general reference to Zholtovsky as the author of the exhibition’s site plan.

The documents, however, do not agree entirely on attribution. One report published by the city attributes the conversion of the former factory building to Ivan Zholtovsky, while Garage Museum’s archive record and a study commissioned by the museum attribute it to Alexei Shchusev. Zholtovsky’s work on the site plan is independently confirmed; surviving sketches and an archive record link the adaptation of this particular building to Shchusev. A definitive attribution of each design stage would require examination of the full set of drawings and approvals.

What do the drawings of the workshop conversion show?

The museum study includes plans of the handicrafts section: the former factory workshop was divided into areas for bibliography, working craft displays, statistics, exports and co-operatives. This range of uses explains why decorating the façade alone would not have been enough: varied exhibits had to fit inside the industrial space, and visitors needed a route through it. The former factory building thus became the setting for a new exhibition.

The book ‘9/45 Krymsky Val’ reproduces dated drawings from 1923: façades facing the river, Krymsky Val and the exhibition courtyard, alternative entrances, staircases and the roof. They show that the designers were tackling several connected problems, not just the appearance of the main façade. The entrance from Krymsky Val and the one from the exhibition courtyard served different purposes. When the study’s authors link the project to Shchusev’s studio, they draw on these sheets and the commission documents, as well as stylistic evidence. The book includes Andrei Snigaryov’s accounts, dated May and June 1923, for façade drawings of the former Bromley factory.

The archive sheets reveal several stages of design, but multiple versions do not mean multiple façades were built. Comparing a drawing with a photograph from 1923 matters because some early proposals may have changed before the exhibition opened. Alexander Deyneka, for example, prepared trial colour sketches for the pavilion; the museum’s researchers do not consider it proven that his proposed scheme was adopted. Without further colour evidence, a black-and-white photograph of the façade cannot establish its exact palette. Evidence of an artistic proposal and evidence of the finish that was actually applied remain distinct.

How did the Handicrafts Pavilion building change after the exhibition?

The former Handicrafts Pavilion gradually became home to the park administration and a sound cinema. According to a Garage Museum study, after the exhibition some rooms were occupied by a club for Goznak employees; administrative uses followed later. El Lissitzky and Lyubov Zalesskaya presented plans to adapt the building for the park administration in September 1930. The architects sought to change the façades and interior layout to suit the new purposes while retaining the structural framework.

A sound cinema was later installed in the building to a design by Vasily Voynov and Rodrigo Dakosta. The museum’s book shows how traces of several periods accumulated within one structure: the factory workshop, exhibition section, administration offices and cinema. During work for Garage Museum in 2018, FORM bureau discovered earlier windows and large staircases behind later finishes. These finds establish that historic layers survived, but they do not mean that the entire building as it stood in the 2010s was an unchanged pavilion from 1923.

This story has an endpoint that matters when asking what has survived. Archi.ru recorded the start of demolition of the former administration building on 16 January 2025 and published its own photograph of the work on 18 January. An article in The Art Newspaper Russia dated 4 June 2026 states that the old building was demolished and a new one built in its place. The Handicrafts Pavilion’s inclusion in a historical report therefore cannot be carried over into a current list of surviving buildings without checking the date. The new building on the same site cannot be considered a structure from 1923.

Which ideas remained on paper, and what new use did the building take on?

In 1930, El Lissitzky and Lyubov Zalesskaya drew up plans for the park administration building. The museum publication reproduces drawings dated 25 September: the ground floor was to contain an entrance hall and club, with offices and a meeting hall above, and a library, exhibition spaces and architectural bureau on the third floor. They offer a rare view of both the proposed façade and the intended distribution of uses. A 500-seat hall was part of the design brief; that figure should not be presented as the confirmed capacity of the cinema built later to a different design.

The original design was changed during the approval process. As the book shows, the city’s comments called for wider corridors, the removal of a double-height space and less glazing. Work began in February 1931 but was delayed; the building’s intended use was then changed again to a cinema. Lissitzky and Zalesskaya’s drawings document the design stage. Photographs, measured drawings and records of later work help establish which ideas were realised in the conversion.

FORM bureau’s discoveries of early window openings and staircases showed that layers from different periods survived until demolition. Yet an exposed historic window might have belonged to the workshop, the pavilion or an intermediate conversion; a single discovery cannot date the adjoining wall. The museum study is valuable because it compares the finds with plans and photographs. Since the former administration building was destroyed in 2025, this documentation has become especially important: it preserves information about the lost fabric, though it cannot preserve the fabric itself.

What traces of the exhibition remained in Gorky Park’s layout in the 1920s?

Traces of the exhibition survive in routes through the park and the positions of several key spaces, but today’s network of paths cannot be treated as an untouched 1923 plan. A heritage assessment report identifies the central parterre, part of the main path near Titovsky Proyezd, the route of a service road along the eastern boundary, the main square and the locations of entrances. This describes continuity in the layout; it does not establish the age of every kerb, surface or tree.

When the park was created in 1928, Konstantin Melnikov reworked the ceremonial area inherited from the exhibition. The assessment explicitly links the parterre layout, which has largely survived, to his work while noting the exhibition’s structure beneath it. Alexander Vlasov later worked on the embankment and the park’s overall composition, and further changes followed in the 1950s. The result is a succession of designs by different authors applied to the same site. The present appearance of a path alone cannot reliably show exactly how it looked in August 1923.

The difference is especially clear at the main entrance. The park’s official website dates the monumental arch to 1955. Although it stands in an area associated with the former approach to the entrance, a structure from 1955 cannot illustrate the entrance to the 1923 exhibition. The report dates the arrangement of fountains along the Main Alley to the 1930s, and the square’s decorative features and lamps to the 1950s. The embankment and planting also changed later. To recognise the earliest layer, it is more useful to compare a historical plan with today’s layout than to look for an ‘old’ appearance in the park’s most striking structure.

How did the creation of the park in 1928 change the exhibition’s main axis?

In laying out the park, Konstantin Melnikov worked with the ceremonial area inherited from the exhibition but changed the position of the main entrance. A city expert report says it was moved from Krymsky Val to the central axis of the composition; the Motor Alley and Co-operation Alley were added across that axis, while the Great Diamond linked the parterre’s focal points. These changes belong to the park’s design, even though the exhibition’s ceremonial area formed their basis. The axis may therefore have a historical connection to 1923, while its recognisable geometry owes much to the 1928 design.

The expert report dates Alexander Vlasov’s work to the 1930s and Vladimir Dolganov’s reconstruction to the 1950s. Changes to the entrance, avenues and planting suggest continuity in the routes and positions of the spaces, but they do not date the entire present-day network of paths.

Why do sources give different answers about what has survived?

The sources use different criteria and describe different points in time. Garage Museum calls the Machinery and Implements pavilion the only surviving pavilion, meaning a structure built specifically for the exhibition. The heritage protection report also includes the former Handicrafts Department building, which began as a factory building before becoming part of the exhibition ensemble and later being adapted for other uses. Reports dated January 2025 describe its demolition; they precede the report of August 2025. The historical inventory in that report cannot, by itself, be taken as confirmation that the building was still standing when the document was signed.

There is a third sense in which something can ‘survive’: the spatial memory of the site. A road’s course may outlast the buildings on either side, but a line in the layout must be assessed differently from a surviving piece of a building. The opposite mistake is possible too: the presence of a late nineteenth-century wall in the former Handicrafts pavilion until 2025 did not make it a wall built for the exhibition. A sound answer therefore distinguishes between a surviving structure built specifically for the exhibition, an older adapted building that has since been lost, and lines in the layout carried through successive changes to the park.

To assess a particular detail, it matters not only where it came from, but also what evidence establishes its origin. An archival photograph from 1923 shows how a building looked when it was taken; a drawing shows the intended design, which must be compared with a photograph of the completed building; an expert report records the site’s historical characteristics; a museum description traces how a building was used; and a report of its demolition clarifies what happened to it later. No single type of evidence can stand in for all the others.

Why does the date of the expert report change how we read the list?

The report mentioning the former Handicrafts Pavilion was signed on 8 August 2025, several months after photographs documented the start of demolition in January. The difference in dates means the discrepancy cannot be explained by suggesting that the report preceded the demolition. The document’s purpose and the nature of its historical list explain why it cannot be taken as evidence that the building survived.

The August 2025 report concerns a project to adapt the piers on Pushkinskaya Embankment within the boundaries of the Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure heritage site. In its historical account of the area, it identifies the former park administration building as a converted wing of the Bromley factory and the exhibition’s Handicrafts Pavilion. This entry describes stages in the park’s development; it is not a separate inspection report on the building on Krymsky Val after January 2025. The document does not explain why the reference to the former administration building remained after its demolition, and this article should not attribute to the experts a motive the document does not state.

To determine whether the building still physically existed by September 2026, the decisive evidence comes from independent, dated accounts of the building itself: Archi.ru’s photographic report on the work carried out on 16–18 January 2025, and The Art Newspaper Russia’s report of 4 June 2026 on the demolition of the old building and construction of a new one. The museum’s archive record and a book on Krymsky Val, meanwhile, help establish exactly what was lost. No single source should be made to serve every purpose: the heritage report explains the building’s historical place in the park, contemporary reporting records its later fate, and the drawings document distinct stages of its architecture.

What survives from the 1923 exhibition in Gorky Park?

By September 2026, two different kinds of evidence remained. The surviving physical monument is the Hexagon, formerly the Machinery and Implements Pavilion, which has endured changes of use, additions and damage. The layout lives on in the alignment of some paths, the main square and the positions of the entrances, all of which the heritage assessment traces back to the exhibition plan. The former Handicrafts Pavilion was important evidence of how Shchusev adapted an old factory building, but after its demolition in 2025 it can no longer be presented as a surviving structure.

The park opened in 1928 on the exhibition site. Architects subsequently altered the parterre, entrance and embankment. The entrance arch was built in 1955, while the Machinery and Implements Pavilion dates from 1923; the two structures belong to different periods in the site’s history.

Gorky Park is included in the standard itinerary offered by Moscow sightseeing tour by car Radius Tour Bureau. The route offers a chance to relate the former exhibition grounds to the 1955 arch; a visit to the Hexagon requires a separately arranged stop and confirmation of access. As of 28 September 2026, the park’s official website reports that parts of the parterre and main entrance are closed for improvement works.

Sources

1. Gorky Park — its history and the latest update on improvements
2. State Historical and Cultural Expert Assessment Report on Gorky Park
3. Garage Museum — the history of the Hexagon Pavilion
4. Garage Museum — reconstruction of a workshop at the Bromley factory, archival photograph from 1923
5. Marianna Evstratova, Sergei Koluzakov. ‘Krymsky Val, 9/45. An Unknown Monument in Gorky Park’
6. Archi.ru — ‘Paint It and Throw It Away’, a report on the demolition of the administration building, 19 January 2025
7. The Art Newspaper Russia — report on the demolition of the administration building and the new building, 4 June 2026
8. State Historical and Cultural Expert Assessment Report on the design documentation for the Hexagon Pavilion, 10 September 2021
9. Garage Museum — materials on the temporary architecture of Gorky Park
10. Russian Art Archive Network — archive materials on Alexey Shchusev and the 1923 exhibition
11. State Historical and Cultural Expert Assessment of Gorky Park: The Exhibition’s History and Changes to the Park’s Layout in 1928
12. Gorky Park — a timeline of 1928 and contemporary newspaper accounts of its opening
13. Vechernyaya Moskva — a retrospective on the opening of the Park of Culture and Leisure, with a reference to the 13 August 1928 issue