Old Moscow is not only cozy mansions and luxurious noble estates, but also industrial buildings, whose architecture received significant attention in the early 20th century. An example of such structures is the elegant wooden and brick buildings of the "Podmoskovnaya" station complex, built in 1901 as part of a large project to create the Moscow-Vindava railway.

The development of industry, the establishment of capitalism, and the growth of trade required a connection between Moscow and Latvian ports. Before the opening of the Vindava (Riga) station, "Podmoskovnaya" was the main freight and passenger station on the route from Moscow to Vindava (now Ventspils), and later to Riga. For almost half a century, until 1945, when the Krasny Baltiets platform opened, Podmoskovnaya served both freight and passenger trains. The two stations were connected by a pedestrian bridge that passed over the tracks. Podmoskovnaya is unique in that almost all other stations on the Riga direction were destroyed during the Great Patriotic War and were later restored according to standard designs from the 1950s.

In the 1940s, Podmoskovnaya was the largest sorting station of the Moscow railway hub. Until the 2000s, the territory housed the locomotive depot TCH-16. Now, the station complex includes several buildings of various purposes. Almost all buildings were designed by architect Yuri Dideriks. The wooden station building has survived, which served as the Moscow station from July to September 1901, until the opening of the Riga station. The administrative building housed locomotive drivers working on a shift basis. This is an example of wooden modernism with characteristic carved elements.

The vertical dominant is a brick water tower with a wooden top, which still supplies water to the railway workers. Locomotives can be refueled from the original water column. There is a rest house for locomotive crews on the premises. The main building of Podmoskovnaya is a fan-shaped depot with a turntable. The turntable allows the locomotive to take the necessary position before entering the depot section.

The depot retains all sections for repairing locomotives and a mechanical processing shop. The roof has exhaust ventilation used during the repair of working locomotives. Previously, the depot was visible from two stations due to the steam column. By the beginning of restoration, some original architectural elements, such as the tops of corner pylons and buttresses on the roof, had been partially lost, and there were fragments of silicate brick masonry.

During the adaptation of the former office building into a museum, emergency restoration work was carried out to restore the brickwork, remove peeling plaster, restore the protective layer, and reproduce the original color scheme. The structures of the depot building and its architectural decor were also restored and brought as close as possible to their original appearance. In 2018, the Podmoskovnaya station complex received awards from the Moscow Government's "Moscow Restoration" competition in the categories of "best organization of repair and restoration work" and "best restoration project and scientific-methodological guidance."