Shchusev Museum of Architecture

[3] In the summer of 1945 Alexey Shchusev began campaigning for the establishment of a museum of Russian national architecture.

He personally picked the former Talyzin House [ru], then occupied by the NKVD, and used his connections within the organization to free it up for the museum.

[6] However, the main purpose of the museum, as envisaged by Shchusev himself, was the recording and archiving of Russian heritage that was destroyed or damaged during the war.

[7] For the first ten years, it operated primarily as a research and archive institution; the first permanent public exhibition opened in 1957.

The Talyzin House, meanwhile, was falling apart after decades of poor maintenance and vibration from subway trains, and had to be closed for a lengthy restoration.