 There were some propositions to preserve the original building, yet at the end it was decided to build a new building.In 1900, the Petersburg State Bank (which controlled the Kiev branch) under Sergei Witte—who was the Russian Empire's Minister of Finance at the time—initiated a competition for construction of a new building.The competition was won by architect Oleksandr Kobeliev, with groundbreaking beginning a few years later in 1902.