First Russian Mall
This is a photo series of a first Russian mall in Moscow. It’s more than 120 years old and these photos are not newer.
There are three stages one can see on the photos. At first the old mall buildings were renovated and new stores were built, then a few photos of a crowd having good time on the party dedicated to the grand opening and then go photos of the new mall opened to public.
This was long before the communist took power in Russia, it was a capitalistic, Tsar ruled old Russia..
| Tags: 19th century, mall, old russia, russian shops, tsar |
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I wonder how many Starbucks were in that mall.
atleast 40
None Yet, this is not the States….for God Sake
very peter the great. fantastic
I think this is the same mall.This is located across the Spasskaya Tower I took this picture circa 2006.
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3549210
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/3500133
The mall is well engineered and is made with the finest construction materials. Beautifully done. Of all the malls I have seen, this one is the most impressive.
Boris, do you know the name this mall?
Yes Richard it certainly is beautiful. I don’t know what it’s called now, but at one time it was known as GUM,(goom), ГУМ. Nice photos by the way.
Thanks for refreshing my memory John. One thing about the ГУМ there were many specialty coffee shops and I remember seeing a KFC. One thing for sure the public washrooms were very clean and spotless. A real treat after using a public washroom in a train station.
I agree !
I think this mall was in a WWII video game. Looking at the pictures gave me a sense of deja vu, but I can’t remember which game it was.
Ha- I was just thinking the same thing! It’s definitely GUM (”goom”) but it wasn’t a WWII game, it was Tom Clancy’s GHOST RECON. In the last level, you have to fight your way through some side streets, and then enter GUM. I laughed when I saw it… it was abstracted in the game, but they really did capture the general feeling of GUM. You even have to go up in the balconies and cross over some of the bridges to get through a hole in the wall to enter Red Square. Great game… still my favorite military game…
Yes, that was the one. Great game.
It’s certainly impressive, but I am not sure it’s the earliest mall in Russia. How about Torgoviye Ryadi (торговые ряды) in St Petersburg?
Looks more like a hospital than a mall.
I see a lot of hard signs after ‘х’, and even after ‘ж’. I wonder, was that common then, and they just got phased out? I never see them like that, and rarely hard signs at all.
The pictures are very pretty, though.
Ooh, I see St. Basil’s in the background of two of them.
You are absolutely right!
After 1917 some letters had disappeared and hard sign had ceased to be written after consonants on the end of words.
It was done for simplification.
i was there in August, and it is still called GUM, so there you go John and Richard
It may be nice now but back in 1987 it was a sole destrying place - one stall had approx 10 pairs of jeans to sell - each wildly more expensive than the average Russian salary.
This is on Red Square, on the side opposite the Kremlin and Lenin’s tomb. I went into it when I was in Moscow in the 80s. It was a bit tatty and run-down then, but it was still a tourist trap with high-priced goods for foreigners.
Later I found a TSUM, the real department stores Muscovites used. I found one near the Bolshoi Ballet. That was a different story! They had sections of goods corraled off by little picket fences. I watched woman queueing up to be let in to the section for women’s winter coats. There were three rails of coats, all different, all different sizes. That was all the coats they had. The staff would let a few women in at a time, and they’d go through the rails looking for a coat that fitted. That was basically it. If it fitted, you took it, because there was NOTHING else. Tragic, really very sad.
It is very nice to know that these historic pictures have still survived. Very interesting.
It is claimed that the West Edmonton Mall is the world’s largest mall. I think the GUM is bigger than that mall.
Indeed, this is the GUM Mall, front to the Kremlin, in the Red Square….and there is not Starbucks Coffee Shops yet in Russia…thanks God…..
actually there is one starbucks in moscow in the “mega” mall in himki…
Absolutely Beautiful! I love the photos, Thanks
[...] One of the more famous GUMs in Russia is the one in the Red Square which is now a modern mall and is located right across from Lenin’s final resting place. A bit ironic, no? This GUM has a long history and before the 1920s it was known as the Upper Trading Rows. Some very interesting archive photos can be found here. [...]