After 16 years of not recognizing the Soviet Union, the United States finally established diplomatic relations with Moscow in 1933. The first American Ambassador to the Soviet Union, William C. Bullitt (1891–1967), came to Moscow and selected a building on Mokhovaya street as the new U.S. Chancery and the Vtorov House as his temporary residence. The Vtorov House appealed to Bullitt because it had large space for entertaining and an American-style heating system, installed by the Soviet Government in 1928. The new third secretary of the Embassy, George Kennan (1904–2005), negotiated a three-year lease for the property for $75,000. Bullitt did not ask for a longer lease, because he had a plan to build a new residence, similar to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, in the Sparrow Hills, but the Soviet government never granted the land for the new house, so Spaso House became the permanent Ambassador's residence.