During Joseph Stalin's reconstruction of old Moscow (1937), several Orphanage buildings facing Bolshoy Ustinsky Bridge were torn down to make way for the new bridge. The right wing of the Orphanage was topped out by June 1941, but the project was not completed until after World War II. Viewed from the outside, this later addition is only marginally different from the left wing, to which the top floor was added at about the same time. The main building conforms quite closely to Blank's original designs.