GUM DEPARTMENT STORE

Description

Essentials about the GUM Department Store in brief

What Harrods is to London and the Kaufhaus des Westens is to Berlin, the GUM department store is to Moscow. Dominating the east side of Red Square, GUM is not just a mere department store, but a real landmark. With an area of about 75,000 square meters, a history of over 100 years and beautiful architecture, GUM is not only one of the largest, but also one of the oldest and most beautiful department stores in Europe. Every day, around 30,000 people visit the GUM to shop, stroll and marvel.

The stores in the GUM Department Store

The name GUM is derived from the Russian “Glawny Uniwersalny Magasin” – translated into English as “universal department store”. But this designation is a bit misleading, because unlike London’s Harrods and Berlin’s Kaufhaus des Westens, the GUM is not a classic department store or department store, but a shopping center. The building’s 250-meter-long and 88-meter-wide interior houses some 200 separate stores on three floors along three glass-roofed longitudinal passages and three transverse passages, as well as the galleries above them on the two upper floors, which are connected by bridges.

Due to the central location of the building and the resulting high rents for the premises, the offer of most of the stores today is primarily aimed at affluent customers. It is therefore hardly surprising that the who’s who of the international fashion and luxury goods world is represented in the GUM with flagship stores.

The exterior design of the GUM Department Store

The GUM building was built between 1890 and 1893 according to a design by architect Alexander Pomerantsev and engineer Vladimir Shukhov. Overall, the building is classified as belonging to the so-called neo-Russian or pseudo-Russian style, a style of historicism for which a mixture of Russian traditionalist architecture of the 15th and 16th centuries with neoclassical, Western European elements is typical.

The Old Russian influence can be seen above all in the building’s facades, which Pomerantsev designed to echo the architecture of the surrounding neighborhoods, including that of the Kremlin and the neighboring History Museum. Typical of this are, in particular, the large arched windows, stylistically reminiscent of Russian Orthodox church buildings, and the two pointed towers in the central area of the building, reminiscent of some of the Kremlin towers. However, some additional European Renaissance elements can be seen on the GUM facades, such as the numerous ornaments around the windows and arcade-like portals at the entrances. The exterior walls were given a cladding of granite, marble and limestone. The most elaborate design was applied to the facade facing Red Square, in the center of which is the central merchandise entrance.

The interior design of the GUM Department Store

In contrast to the facades, which are primarily based on the traditions of old Russian architecture, the interior of the GUM was created in a very modern style for the end of the 19th century, borrowing from European architecture and featuring numerous steel and glass elements. Unique for the time and still striking today are the transparent, concave roof structures over the three 250-meter-long longitudinal passages.

A striking element inside the GUM is the fountain, which is located in the center of the building, at the intersection of the two central longitudinal and transverse passages. It has an octagonal basin made of red quartzite, the center of which is a mushroom-shaped bronze structure. Exactly above the center of the building with the fountain, the glass roof construction takes the form of a dome.

The history of the GUM Deparment Store

Precursors of the GUM

For a department store, GUM can look back on a long and very eventful history. As can be seen from various documents, the neighborhoods directly east of Red Square were already characterized by trade before the 17th century. Even on the square itself, which even then was the central square of the city, there were many stalls. With the increase of Moscow’s population in the late 18th century, street trading in the heart of the city expanded more and more; in the second half of the century, the entire area between Red Square and the streets bordering it to the east already resembled a huge marketplace.

The first trading houses

The first attempts to bring the disorderly trading activities around Red Square under one roof were made in the second half of the 18th century. In the 1780s, some particularly influential Moscow merchants succeeded in obtaining permission from the Tsar for the construction of a two-storey brick building east of Red Square in order to relieve the tsar from the hustle and bustle of trade, which also hindered access to the Kremlin. A few years later, this first commercial building, which housed countless stalls, was the first forerunner of today’s department store. At about the same time, a similar trading building was erected further south.

The second trading houses

However, the newly built merchant houses did not last long. Although they were not built of wood, as was common in Moscow at the time, but of brick, they burned out almost completely in 1812, when some city dwellers set fire to large parts of Moscow during the approach of French troops in the war against Napoleon. After the war, however, trade quickly flourished again and the merchant houses had to be rebuilt. Between 1814 and 1815, the upper trading house was restored to its old location (where the GUM is today), and from then on it would be the center of Moscow’s commerce for decades to come. This second GUM predecessor also consisted essentially of the representative facades, which housed very numerous and, for the most part, quite chaotically arranged store houses inside.

Although the trading house was built in a massive construction, it showed structural defects already a few years after its completion. These increasingly led to water penetrating the interior of the building during heavy rainfall and damaging inadequately covered merchandise. Since the individual stalls belonged to a wide variety of owners, it was extremely difficult to coordinate a fundamental renovation of the building. By the middle of the 19th century, the building was already in such poor condition that renovation seemed futile and demolition was the only remaining option.

The construction of today’s GUM

The competition for ideas for a new building, held in 1889, was won by the design of the renowned Petersburg architecture professor Alexander Pomerantsev and the hitherto unknown engineer Vladimir Shukhov. The jury praised the design as rational and economical and at the same time architecturally very well in harmony with the old Russian ensemble around the Moscow Kremlin. The merchants particularly liked the planned glass roofing of the arcades, which was stylistically reminiscent of similar arcades in European metropolises such as Milan, Paris or Vienna, which were just coming into fashion at the time. In Russia, such a construction was completely unknown until then. The foundation stone for the new building was laid in 1890; three years later the construction was completed.

The opening of the GUM

The opening of the new trading house in the heart of Moscow was a major event that met with a response even beyond the borders of the Russian Empire. In addition to the novel glass roof, through which a great deal of daylight penetrated the interior of the building, the rows of stores had very modern interior fittings for the time, including central heating, several electrically operated freight elevators and even an in-house power plant to supply electricity.

Within a few days, the GUM developed into a crowd puller and a tourist attraction. Even those who could not afford to shop there came to see the new superlative department store. The passages on the first floor were like a covered promenade where it was warm in summer even in winter.

The GUM in tsarist times

Above all, however, wealthy citizens got their money’s worth here. The range of products on offer in the original almost 350 stores, which were spread over four levels including the basement, extended from sweets and delicatessen to perfumery products, fashion items, watches and jewelry, furniture and sanitary equipment. For the first time in Russia, price tags were used in the trading rows, ushering in the transition to a completely new trading culture that stood out from the haggling that had been common in street trading and smaller stores until then. In addition to almost all kinds of merchandise, customers had access to a wide range of accompanying services, including porters, several catering outlets, a bank branch, a post office, a hair salon, and even a dentist’s office. The upper floor of the department store also housed an event hall, which occasionally hosted concerts and art exhibitions.

For more than twenty years, from its opening until the end of the tsarist empire, the department store was the center of Moscow’s economic and social life and was considered one of the best department stores in the world due to its comprehensive, high-quality assortment and exemplary service for the time.

The GUM in the early Soviet period

With the October Revolution of 1917 and the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, the fate of the department store was to take a turn for the worse. The new rulers also began to nationalize the stores in the GUM. These closed one by one, as even for smaller shopkeepers, initially spared from forced expropriation, trading in the increasingly empty rows was no longer profitable. In the 1920s, trade in the department store, which had by then come to an almost complete standstill, revived somewhat when the New Economic Policy initiated by Lenin permitted privately operated trade. At the same time, the department store received its current name “GUM”, which, however, stood for “Gosudarstvenny Uniwersalny Magasin”, i.e. “State Department Store”, at that time and during the entire period of socialism. Also, the assortment of the GUM in the 1920s was by far not as rich and distinguished as before the revolution. It was essentially limited to everyday items and propaganda necessities such as red flags and portraits of Soviet statesmen.

With the end of the New Economic Policy in the early 1930s, however, trade in the GUM finally came to an end. The stores were cleared and occupied by a number of other state organizations. The building retained the name GUM even during this period, although officially it was no longer a department store at all.

The GUM in the late Soviet period

Largely spared from the German bombardment of Moscow during World War II, the GUM was nevertheless threatened with demolition for several years in the late 1940s, after leading Soviet architects of the time had been commissioned by Stalin to draw up a plan for a giant sculpture commemorating the victory over Germany. Since this was to stand directly in the heart of the capital, i.e. on Red Square, but the square itself was to remain free for military parades and solemn demonstrations, the plan called for the final closure and demolition of the department store. Shortly after Stalin’s death in 1953, however, not only was the demolition plan rejected, but the Council of Ministers of the USSR decided to reopen the GUM as a department store. According to oral tradition, this happened on the initiative of party functionary and later head of state Nikita Khrushchev, who wanted to revive the GUM as a showcase department store. Immediately, the renovation of the building and the reconstruction of the interior began, and on December 24, 1953, the GUM was able to reopen its doors to the public.

Its reputation as the country’s flagship department store remained virtually unchallenged from its reopening until the collapse of the Soviet Union. While the shortage of goods typical of socialist states ensured until the early 1990s that only an extremely meager supply of consumer goods could be found in ordinary stores, department stores and department stores of the Soviet empire, a secret department, inaccessible to the public, existed in the GUM at the same time, in which high-ranking state employees and their relatives could stock up on high-quality clothing, some of it imported from the West, and other so-called deficit goods. Surplus stocks were always transferred to the generally accessible departments, much to the delight of ordinary consumers. This, in turn, led to long queues forming in front of the GUM entrances every morning, even hours before opening, as many ordinary citizens – often having traveled especially from other cities in the Soviet Union – hoped to get their hands on one or another shortage item.

The fact that such scenes took place in the heart of the Soviet capital, right across from the Kremlin and Lenin’s Mausoleum, was a thorn in the side of conservative statesmen in particular, and even led to renewed plans to close and demolish the department store in the late 1970s. According to modern legend, the GUM owed its preservation at that time only to the personal interference of the head of state Leonid Brezhnev, whose wife Victoria was a regular customer of a tailor shop there.

The GUM after the collapse of the Soviet Union

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent privatization of state ownership in Russia ushered in new times for GUM. The formerly state-operated sales area of the department store was gradually leased to various private retail companies. The name was adapted to the new circumstances: The old, familiar abbreviation “GUM” remained, but since 1990 it has stood for “Glawny Uniwersalny Magasin”, i.e. “Main Department Store” instead of previously “State Department Store”.

In the following decade, the GUM underwent a transformation from a former socialist department store to a distinguished shopping temple. The building itself was also extensively renovated from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s, and its interior was renewed. Today, GUM is one of the most beautiful and luxurious shopping temples in the world. Even those who don’t plan to shrink their travel budget with a shopping spree at GUM should stroll through the department store’s passages. After all, the sheer size and impressive architecture make a visit to the GUM absolutely worthwhile even apart from a shopping trip.