[5] In 1913 a large lot on the square was sold by Princess Lobanova-Rostovaya to the family of the Russian industrialist Nikolay Vtorov, who owned the largest textile manufacturing firm in Imperial Russia.

The first American ambassador to the Soviet Union, William C. Bullitt (1891–1967), came to Moscow and selected a building on Mokhovaya street as the new U.S. Chancery and the Vtorov House as his temporary residence.

[9] Early in 1934, the ambassador and the first American diplomatic staff moved into Spaso House, which, due to structural problems with the Mohovaya street building, at first served as both the residence and embassy chancery.

The decorations included a forest of ten young birch trees in the chandelier room, a dining room table covered with Finnish tulips, a lawn made of chicory grown on wet felt; an aviary made from fishnet filled with pheasants, parakeets, and one hundred zebra finches, on loan from the Moscow Zoo; and a menagerie of several mountain goats, a dozen white roosters, and a baby bear.

The bear became drunk on champagne given to him by Karl Radek, and in the early morning hours the zebra finches escaped from the aviary and perched below the ceilings around the house, but other than that the party was considered a great success.

A six-man team of American diplomats, led by Second Secretary Llewellyn Thompson, kept the embassy functioning, issuing transit visas and reporting to Washington on the military situation.

The new U.S. ambassador, Admiral William Standley, based in Kuibyshev, traveled regularly to Spaso House to meet with Soviet officials to discuss American military assistance.

In August 1945, a delegation from the Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union presented a carved wooden plaque of the Great Seal of the United States to U.S. ambassador Averell Harriman, as a "gesture of friendship" to the USSR's World War II ally.

Unknown to anyone in the embassy, it contained The Thing, a covert listening device (or "bug"), enabling the Soviet Union to spy on the United States.

From March to April 1947, Spaso House was the site of a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers, including Secretary of State George Marshall, who met in Moscow to draft the final peace treaties with Germany and Austria.

[14] The building of the Berlin Wall and Cuban Missile Crisis caused a new chill in Russian-American relations, but after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, both General Secretary Khrushchev and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko came to Spaso House to express their condolences to the new U.S. ambassador, Foy D.

On May 26, 1972, President Richard Nixon, Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev and Premier Alexei Kosygin used Spaso House as the venue to announce their agreement on the first round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT 1) and on an Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

Vice President George H. W. Bush came to Spaso house three times to attend the funerals of General Secretaries Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko.

[citation needed] On May 31, 1988, the jazz pianist Dave Brubeck performed in the Spaso House ballroom for President Ronald Reagan and the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

On March 24, 2002, President George W. Bush also came to Spaso House to commemorate the signing that day of the Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Arms Reductions.

These included a reception for Russian World War II veterans, which featured a real World War II Lend-Lease jeep parked in the ballroom; a ceremony for the return of a medallion, owned by the family of Czar Nicholas II, which had been stolen from the Hermitage Museum, and recovered by American and Russian law enforcement; and a ceremony on July 20, 2010 honoring the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first joint Soviet-American space mission in July 1975, with the participation of astronauts Thomas Patten Stafford and Vance Brand and cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov.

[18] On October 29, 2010, Ambassador Beyrle celebrated the connections between American and Russian literature and culture by hosting an Enchanted Ball at Spaso House.

Guests at the 2010 ball included theater director Oleg Tabakov, writers Victor Erofeev and Vladimir Sorokin, and sculptors Zurab Tsereteli and Alexander Bourganov.