Moscow Row
The Moscow Row was built in 1869 on the western side of Sergievska Square, along the Lopan embankment between the Merchants' and Lopansky Bridges, to a design by the Kharkov city architect Boris Semyonovich Pokrovsky — the same architect who drew up the new municipal shops after the fire of 1866 and contributed to the competition for the neighbouring Aleksandrivska Chapel. It was a stone block of 26 shops, expanding the city's retail capacity. The proximity to the Lopan bridges made it a convenient transfer point for wholesale trade in textiles, china, groceries and haberdashery.
Through the second half of the 19th century the Moscow Row was one of the principal channels through which Sloboda Ukraine received the industrial wares of central Russia: textiles, metalware, tea, sugar, tools and porcelain arrived from Moscow via Kursk and Belgorod. By the turn of the 20th century the traditional shops were joined by stores selling sewing machines, typewriters and the first gramophones.
Nationalisation in 1919 turned the row into warehouses and offices. Unlike the Shubny and Fruit Rows, which were demolished in the early 1930s during the reconstruction of the central squares, the Moscow Row survived through the pre-war years. The fighting of 1941—1943 left it badly damaged; after the war, the row — together with its neighbours, the Novo-Sergiivsky and Nikolaevsky Rows — was not rebuilt.
