Moscow. Petrovka Street

Historically, it was one of the main shopping streets of the capital. The modern name was given in the XIV century. The “ideological inspirer“ was the Vysoko-Petrovsky Monastery.

At first, it was a road connecting the monastery with the Kremlin. It passed along the Neglinka River.The first buildings for the nobility on local lands began to appear from the XVIII century.

Until the middle of the XVIII century, due to the floods of the Neglinnaya River flowing east of the street, only the left part of the street was built up, then the block between Petrovka and modern Neglinnaya Street was also densely built up.
Since the second half of the XVIII century, the possessions of the nobility begin to appear on Petrovka: the court of Prince V. F. Sibirsky, the estate of the Vorontsov-Rayevskys, the estate of Prince Shcherbatov, the possession of the Buturlins.

In 1824, a modern building of the Bolshoi Theater was built at the beginning of the street.

In the XIX century Petrovka gained fame as one of the main shopping streets of Moscow. They traded mainly in clothes and luxury goods. Most of the shops and shops were owned by foreigners. At the end of the century, two large buildings (No. 18-20) were built on the right side of the street, with shops on the lower floors and apartments and hotels on the upper floors.

At the beginning of the XX century, the importance of Petrovka as a shopping street increased even more — in 1898 a house and a store of the Depre wine trading company were built, in 1906 Petrovsky Passage, in 1908 the Muir and Merilise store, later transformed into a TSUM.

Bolshoi Theater
In 1776, Prince P. V. Urusov began the construction of a theater named after Petrovsky Street.
However, the Urusov Theater burned down before its opening, and the prince handed over the business to his partner, the English entrepreneur Michael Medox.
Medox built the Bolshoi Petrovsky Theater, opened in 1781 and burned down in 1805.
In 1821-1824, according to the project of architect O. I. Bove and professor of the Imperial Academy of Arts A. A. Mikhailov, a modern theater building was erected, which received the name "Bolshoi".

TSUM Building
In 1908, a large store of the company "Muir and Meriliz" was built here according to the project of R. I. Klein
the building was made of glass and reinforced concrete, it was decided in the forms of English Gothic.
Electric elevators for customers operated in the building — a novelty for Moscow at the beginning of the XX century.
During the Soviet period, the Muir and Meriliz store was transformed into a Central Department Store.
In 1974, a new building was added to the old Central Department Store.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a large-scale reconstruction and reconstruction of the store building was carried out.