Nikolai Alexandrovich Alekseev, a well-known Moscow entrepreneur, philanthropist, and politician, was also an organizer of the city's economy and came from the merchant dynasty of Alekseevs. He served as the mayor of Moscow in 1885 and 1893. Thanks to Alekseev, modern systems of water supply, sewage, as well as schools and hospitals were built in Moscow.

Nikolai Alexandrovich was born in 1852 in Moscow into the merchant family of Alekseevs, from which his cousin K. S. Stanislavsky also came. After the fire of 1812, the family settled near the Rogozhskaya Zastava, in an area known as Alekseevskie Streets (later Communist). His mother, born Bostanzhoghlo, came from a Greek merchant lineage. B. N. Chicherin noted that Alekseev combined the cunning and refinement of a Greek with the Russian nature.

By the age of thirty, Nikolai headed the Board of the Trading and Industrial Partnership "Vladimir Alekseev," managing large enterprises in Pushkin, Kharkov, and the Moscow region. The family owned a factory producing gold and silver threads. Since 1881, he actively participated in city politics as a member of the Moscow City Duma. In November 1885, at the age of 33, Alekseev became the mayor of Moscow.

Contemporaries described him as a tall, strong man with quick movements and a loud, ringing voice full of cheerful notes. He was characterized by speed, determination, and energy.

Alekseev directed the city's economy towards independent municipal development, striving to create his own sources of income, as tax revenues accounted for only a third of the budget. He demonstrated managerial talent by creating such sources and managing municipal property. At his initiative, the city began to create commercial municipal enterprises, which were built on borrowed funds starting in 1887. In 1892, the city issued a bond loan equal to the annual income (7 million rubles). Municipal enterprises only became profitable in the second half of the 1890s, after Alekseev's death, and by 1913 their contribution to the budget reached 55% of the revenue.

Nikolai Alexandrovich passed away in March 1893 from a fatal gunshot that occurred in his office, fired by a mentally ill person.