For over two hundred years, all buildings on the island were wooden. After a devastating fire that destroyed the monastery buildings, the construction of the first stone church in the Russian North, the Transfiguration Cathedral, began in 1478 and was completed and consecrated in 1481. The construction was financed by the appanage prince Andrei the Less, who owned Vologda, Kubena, and Zaozerye. White stone was brought from Staritsa, and bricks from Tver. The bricks were in the form of flat tiles, which at that time were already falling out of mass use in Russian architecture. There are many assumptions about the origin of the masters who built the cathedral. It is currently believed that the architects were invited from Rostov, as the monastery was part of the Rostov diocese in the 15th century.

The architecture of the cathedral combined elements of Moscow and Rostov architecture. Initially, the Transfiguration Cathedral was a four-pillar, three-apse, cross-domed church on a low basement. It was topped with three tiers of kokoshniks and two domes: a large one in the center and a smaller one over the southeast corner, where the chapel was located. The walls, apses, and drums of the domes were richly decorated with ceramic relief tiles, cornices, runners, and niches. This cathedral became a model for the construction of other churches in northern monasteries, such as Ferapontov, Kirillo-Belozersky, and Spaso-Prilutsky.

In 1925, the Soviet authorities closed the monastery. The monks were expelled, and attempts were made to organize a colony for juvenile delinquents in the residential buildings, which soon dispersed. In the autumn, a fire damaged many buildings. In the same year, the oldest church in the Russian North, by that time already five-domed, was destroyed by an explosion, leaving a pile of rubble in its place. In 1937, the Transfiguration Cathedral was also blown up for the bricks intended for the construction of the local House of Culture. However, the bricks obtained were never used for construction.