Although it was extinguished, a large amount of information was lost or stolen (several firefighters were KGB personnel trying to remove sensitive material).

Construction of a new chancery began in 1979, with planning having started ten years prior as part of the Cold War détente but delayed due to American dissatisfaction with the sites and conditions, with the Soviet Union being perceived to have gotten the upper hand in negotiations.

A team led by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill architect Charles Bassett designed the new embassy, which was "self-contained", having residences, a school and a shopping center along with office space, and had a red brick exterior to "convey some American flavor".

In 1985, the building's columns and walls were found to be riddled with listening devices to such an extent that classified information had to be handled in the old embassy.

The standoff was resolved in 1994 when American workers were allowed to partially dismantle and rebuild the chancery, replacing the top three floors with four completely new ones.

Look at the top two floors of the new building of the U.S. Embassy—it's a huge antenna, which listens to the Moscow air," Igor Korotchenko, an editor of a magazine called National Defense and a former specialist in Russia's military command, said in 2013 on a Russian television program.

[13][vague] The Vedomosti newspaper, citing a source in the Russian special services, stated that the embassy is likely to host the local server of XKeyscore, an Internet surveillance system.

[14] According to a New York Times report on November 14, 2017, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson hired Elite Security Holdings, a Russian company associated with Victor Budanov, a KGB general involved in counterintelligence who was a boss of Vladimir Putin, to guard all United States diplomatic missions in Russia.

"[22] In addition to the buildings on Novinsky Boulevard / Bolshoy Devyatinsky Lane, the United States also owns, on a leasehold basis, Vtorov's Mansion (the so-called Spaso House).