GUM (department store)

GUM(Russian:ГУМ)is a shopping center inMoscow,Russia. It was also the maindepartment storein many cities of the formerSoviet Union;similarly named stores operated in someSoviet republicsand inpost-Soviet states.

The GUM façade faces Red Square

Aerial view of GUM roof

Upper Trading Rows by night

The most famous GUM is the large store facingRed Squarein theKitai-gorodarea – itself traditionally a mall ofMoscow.Originally, and today again, the building functions as ashopping mall.During most of the Soviet period it was essentially a department store as there was one vendor: the Soviet State. Before the 1920s the location was known as theUpper Trading Rows(Russian:Верхние торговые ряды,romanized:Verhnije torgovyje rjady).

As of 2021, GUM carries over 100 different brands,and has cafes and restaurantsinside the mall.

Moscow GUM

Design and structure

Structure ofShukhov'sroof

With the façade extending for 242 m (794 ft) along the eastern side of Red Square, the Upper Trading Rows were built between 1890 and 1893 byAlexander Pomerantsev(responsible for architecture) andVladimir Shukhov(responsible for engineering). The trapezoidal building features a combination of elements ofRussian medieval architectureand asteelframework andglassroof, a similar style to the great 19th-centuryrailway stationsofLondon.William Craft Brumfielddescribed the GUM building as "a tribute both to Shukhov's design and to the technical proficiency ofRussian architecturetoward the end of the 19th century ".

The glass-roofed design made the building unique at the time of construction. The roof, the diameter of which is 14 m (46 ft), looks light, but it is a firm construction made of more than 50,000 metal pods (about 743 t (819 short tons)), capable of supporting snowfall accumulation. Illumination is provided by huge arched skylights of iron and glass, each weighing some 740 t (820 short tons) and containing in excess of 20,000 panes of glass. The facade is divided into several horizontal tiers, lined with red Finnish granite,Tarusamarble, and limestone. Each arcade is on three levels, linked by walkways of reinforced concrete.

History

Inside the store in 1893: elongated shop galleries are bridged with innovative metal-and-glass vaults, designed byVladimir Shukhov

Inside view of the structure and finish applied to the building

Catherine II of RussiacommissionedGiacomo Quarenghi,a Neoclassical architect from Italy, to design a huge trade area along the east side of Red Square. However, that building was lost to the1812 Fire of Moscowand replaced by trading rows designed byJoseph Bove.In turn, the current structure opened in 1894, replacing Bove's.

By the time of theRussian Revolution of 1917,the building contained some 1,200stores.After the Revolution, GUM wasnationalized.During theNEPperiod (1921–28), however, GUM as a State Department Store operated as a model retail enterprise for consumers throughout Russia regardless of class, gender, and ethnicity. GUM's stores were used to further Bolshevik goals of rebuilding private enterprise along socialist lines and "democratizing consumption for workers and peasants nationwide". In the end, GUM's efforts to buildcommunismthroughconsumerismwere unsuccessful and arguably "only succeeded in alienating consumers from state stores and instituting a culture of complaint and entitlement".

GUM continued to be used as a department store untilJoseph Stalinconverted it into office space in 1928 for the committee in charge of his firstFive Year Plan.After thesuicideof Stalin's wifeNadezhdain 1932, the GUM was used briefly to display her body.

After reopening as a department store in 1953, GUM became one of the few stores in the Soviet Union that did not have shortages ofconsumergoods, and thequeuesof shoppers were long, often extending entirely across Red Square.

Several times during the 1960s and 1970s, the Second Secretary of the Communist PartyMikhail Suslov,who hated having a department store facingLenin's Mausoleum,tried to convert GUM into an exhibition hall and museum showcasing the achievements of the Soviet Union and Communism, without the knowledge of General SecretaryLeonid Brezhnev.Each time, however, Brezhnev was tipped off and put a stop to such plans.

At the end of the Soviet era, GUM was partially, then fully, privatized, and it had a number of owners before it ended up being owned by the supermarket companyPerekrestok.In May 2005, a 50.25% interest was sold toBosco di Ciliegi,a Russianluxury goodsdistributor and boutique operator. As a private shopping mall, it was renamed in such a fashion that it could maintain its old acronym. The first wordgosudarstvennyj('state') has been replaced withglavnyj('main'), so that GUM is now an abbreviation for "Main Universal Store".

See also

• TsUM,another large department store in Moscow.
• Passage,a department store inSt. Petersburg, Russia.

Sources

• Brumfield, William Craft (1991)The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture,University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford,ISBN0-520-06929-3
• English, Elizabeth Cooper (2000)."Arkhitektura i mnimosti": The origins of Soviet avant-garde rationalist architecture in the Russian mystical-philosophical and mathematical intellectual tradition ",a dissertation in architecture, University of Pennsylvania
• Hilton, Marjorie L. (2004)."Retailing the Revolution: The State Department Store (GUM) and Soviet Society in the 1920s".Journal of Social History,(Oxford University Press) 37 (4): 939–964; 1127.ISSN0022-4529
• Rainer Graefe, Jos Tomlow: "Vladimir G. Suchov 1853–1939. Die Kunst der sparsamen Konstruktion." 192 S., Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 1990,ISBN3-421-02984-9

External links

• Official website
• GUMatStructurae
• Vladimir Grigorievich Shukhov
• The Roof of GUM