Both brothers, Franz Sr. and Osip, died in 1867. Business debts ruined their families, forcing Daria Karlovna to seek free boarding schools for the children; she relocated to Moscow and worked for Pavel Tretyakov.

19-year-old Franz made his living by assisting architect Alexander Kaminsky (a relative of Pavel Tretyakov), in painting icons, church frescoes and daily illustrations for newspapers and magazines.

This experience (as well as the Tretyakov connection) familiarized Franz with Moscow's artistic circles and the wealthy patrons of the arts who would become his future clients, notably the Morozov family of Old Believers.

Throughout the 1880s, Schechtel completed many theatrical stage designs; most of his graphics from this period have been lost, excluding a small fraction stored at the Bakhrushin Museum in Moscow.

Schechtel's first own, undisputed building - Zinaida Morozova House in Spiridonovka Street, 1893, famous for Mikhail Vrubel artwork - is a mix of Gothic architecture and romanticism.

The first sign of a new, mature style (a Russian version of Art Nouveau, Russky Modern), appears in his 1899 Arshinov House in Bolshaya Ordynka Street.

Schechtel's turn to Art Nouveau is associated with the 1900 Levenson Printshop in Trekhprudny Lane, in Patriarshy Ponds, a well-to-do neighborhood near Moscow's center.

His "Popov Tea House" pavilion at the Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris earned a silver medal, exposing him to international fame (diploma).

In this period, he designed (in Moscow alone, not including out-of-town commissions): Unlike his rival Lev Kekushev, Schechtel never committed himself to a single style.

His Yaroslavsky Terminal and Ryabushinsky House are distinct, setting two trends of Schechtel's future work: the internationalized, refined Art Nouveau and the last round of Russian Revival before the Revolution of 1917.

Emphasis on the top floor ornamentation, witnessed in the Merchant Society Building, became a key feature in the so-called Rationalist Modern trend in commercial architectural design.

Shechtel cooperated with various planning and design agencies, continued teaching at Stroganov School of Arts and VKhuTEMAS, and even applied to the 1925 Lenin Mausoleum contest (Schechtel's entry), but did not build anything anymore.