The massive building located on the embankment on Balchug Island is known as the House of the Embankment. The house was built between 1927 and 1931 and was then known as the Government Building as it was built specifically as a residence for Soviet government officials, including a theatre and a cinema. As such, at the height of Stalin's purges in the late 1930s, many of its residents "disappeared" and the whole building was heavily bugged. Today the house contains residential apartments, as well as a small museum dedicated to the history of the house.