Furthermore, the quarter where the church is located was also known by that name (Ղազանչեցոց թաղ, Ghazanchetsots t′agh) as it was populated by the descendants of migrants from Ghazanchi. The church was designed by Simon Ter-Hakobian(ts). The church was consecrated on 20 September 1888 according to an inscription on the upper part of the southern portal. The inscription reads: Decline The majority of the Armenian population of Shusha was massacred or expelled in March 1920. The cathedral was damaged and gradually declined. After the region came under Soviet control, due to state atheist policies, it was eventually closed down in 1930 and was turned into a granary in the 1940s. Its dome and part of the walls surrounding it were destroyed in the 1950s. It was then looted and its stones were used to build several upscale houses in the Azerbaijani part of the city. By the 1970s the cathedral "looked like it [had] survived heavy shelling." After public pressure, Soviet and Azerbaijani authorities granted permission for the launch of a restoration project of the cathedral in the 1980s. The restoration began in 1981 and continued until 1988 and was supervised by Volodya Babayan. By 1987 only two of the four stone statues of angels on the bell tower had survived. First Nagorno-Karabakh War Shusha's Armenian minority was expelled from the city when the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict began in February 1988. The cathedral was turned into an armory by Azerbaijan. According to Armenian political analyst Levon Melik-Shahnazaryan, the cathedral was set on fire three times between 1988 and 1991 using car tires. Azerbaijanis dismantled the stone statues of angels on the bell tower in 1989. They reportedly sold off its bronze bell, which was later found in a market in Donetsk, Ukraine and was bought by an Armenian officer for three million rubles and returned to Armenia. Prior to the fall of Shushi to the Armenians, Azerbaijani forces stored hundreds of boxes of BM-21 Grad missiles as the cathedral was safe from potential Armenian bombardment. Shusha was used as a base for the shelling of Stepanakert, the largest city of Karabakh, with Grad launchers for several months. Armenian volunteers, including noted activist Igor Muradyan, carried the wooden boxes of artillery and rocket shells out of the church immediately after the capture of the city. The flag of Armenia was raised on top of the damaged dome by Armenian troops. Melik-Shahnazaryan wrote