Main Department Store

Main Department Store or GUM is a modern namer for the main department store in many cities of the Soviet Union, known as State Department Store in the Soviet times. Similar-named stores were in the some Soviet republics and post-Soviet states. The most famous GUM is a large store in Kitai-gorod of Moscow, facing Red Square. It is actually a shopping mall. Prior to the 1920s the place was known as the Upper Trading Rows.

The existing structure — defined by William Craft Brumfield as “a tribute both to Shukhov’s design and to the technical proficiency of Russian architecture toward the end of the 19th century” — was built to replace the previous trading rows that had burnt down in 1825. The glass-roof designed made the building unique at the time of construction.

The roof, whose diameter is 14 m (46 ft), looks light, but it is a firm construction made of over 50,000 pods (about 819 short tons (743 t) of metal. Illumination is provided by huge arched skylights of iron and glass, each weighing some 820 short tons (740 t) and containing in excess of 20,000 panes of glass. The facade is split 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.