The three-story house No. 16 on Pyatnitskaya Street, stretching along the street, belonged to the Vargin merchants in the 19th century. Its foundation was a wing of a large merchant estate from the 18th century, owned by merchant R. I. Zhuravlyov. The main house was destroyed in the fire of 1812 but was later restored with the addition of a mezzanine. In the late 1820s, the property passed to the Vargin family, and part of the premises housed a small production.

In N. V. Gogol's notebook from 1846, it is mentioned: "Vasily Vasilievich Vargin, a clever merchant in Moscow." Vasily Vargin, the most prominent representative of the Vargin family, was born in 1791 into a peasant family. His ancestors were engaged in knitting and selling mittens called 'varygami,' from which the surname originated. Vasily showed organizational skills and entrepreneurial talent early on, receiving his first government contract for supplying canvas to the army at the age of 16. During the War of 1812, he was one of the main suppliers to the Russian army.

Problems began in 1827 when the military minister Tatishchev was replaced by A. I. Chernyshev, who started to persecute Vargin as a protégé of Tatishchev. Vasily Vasilievich was accused of embezzlement and misappropriation of government funds. Later, the charges were dropped, but his health was undermined. On January 9, 1859, he passed away without leaving heirs, and his estate was inherited by his brothers and nephews.

In the 1860s, Yakov Vasilievich Vargin combined all the buildings along the red line of Pyatnitskaya into a single house, which was completed with a third floor ten years later and became a profitable property with commercial shops on the first floor.

It is worth noting the small arch for pedestrians to the left of the passageway of house No. 16. Few such arches remain in Moscow.

Until recently, there was a sign "We Strengthen the Defense of the USSR" under the windows of the second floor, introduced in 1937 for the Osoaviakhim organizations of residential buildings. The sign disappeared in the summer of 2012.

If you enter the passageway, you can access a system of courtyards. In the right part of the courtyard is a small one-story wing (house No. 16, building 6), where Leo Tolstoy rented an apartment in 1857 and 1858 and wrote the story "Cossacks."