Degree studies took 11 years till 1898 – strapped for cash, Ivan used to take long leaves working as apprentice for the Saint Petersburg architectural firms.

Zholtovsky planned to relocate to Tomsk after graduation, but eventually received and accepted a quick job offer from Stroganov Art School in Moscow.

While Neoclassical revival [1] was at this time the second largest school in Russia (in high demand in Saint Petersburg, less so in Moscow), the Renaissance influence was unique to Zholtovsky, and will remain his trademark style until his death.

In 1918, he and Alexey Shchusev led the Architectural Studio for the Replanning of Moscow, Moscow's only state architectural firm,[6] hiring and training young men like Ilya Golosov, Panteleimon Golosov, Konstantin Melnikov, Nikolai Ladovsky and Nikolai Kolli (the 12 disciples, split evenly between constructivism and traditional art).

Later, he and Shchusev settled on a less radical growth model [8] with only minor attempt to break away from circular layout by cutting two major avenues through the city core.

[9] Works of this period (none survived to date) When he came back from a long trip to Italy in 1923–1926, New Economic Policy (NEP) brought considerable relief to architects.

Zholtovsky was invited to lead Workshop No.1; like other old architects (Shchusev, Vladimir Shchuko, Ivan Fomin), he fitted perfectly in Stalin's system.

[11] His pre-war works range from seaside resorts to industrial freezers,[17] although his actual personal input to each project, with a few exceptions, is not clear.

In the same 1945, Zholtovsky workshop [22] completed a controversial House of Lions, in Yermolayevsky lane - a luxurious downtown residence for Red Army Marshals, styled as an early 19th-century estate.

Floor plans deliberately discouraged conversion of small-family units to overcrowded multi-family kommunalki (kitchen is accessible only through the family rooms).

[23] Zholtovsky's favorite flat walls (no bay windows, no setbacks) and modest application of Florentine canon fit the purpose quite well.

In February 1949, a "professional round table" branded his Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya House as formalist, condemned Zholtovsky's educational efforts, and virtually excommunicated him from practice for a year.

Suddenly, fortune turned around, and in March, 1950 Zholtovsky was awarded Stalin Prize, second class – for the same building that was ostracized a year before.

This work, pushed forward in January 1951 by Nikita Khrushchev (then City of Moscow party boss),[27] paved the road for a switch from masonry to prefab concrete in later 1950s.

Zholtovsky's last apartment block (Prospect Mira, 184) was stripped of "redundancies", and in ten years that followed, architecture separated from construction management and folded down to city planning and engineering.