The building of the Noble Institute was erected between 1847 and 1851 according to a project developed by the Main Administration of Transport and Public Buildings, under the guidance of the chief architect of the Kazan Educational District, P. S. Hess.

The walls of this building hold the memory of many outstanding figures in history and culture. Here, I. N. Ulyanov, the father of V. I. Lenin, began his teaching career, working as a senior teacher of mathematics and physics from 1855 to 1863. It was in Penza that he met his future wife, M. A. Blank. Among the graduates of the institute were the writer V. A. Sleptsov, theater critic A. N. Bazhenov, and the founder of domestic pediatrics N. F. Filatov.

In 1863, the Noble Institute was closed, and five years later, a male gymnasium was established in its building, later named the First. Among its graduates were professors of Kazan University G. F. Dormidontov, L. Z. Kolmachevsky, N. P. Zagoskin, doctors E. G. Salishchev, K. R. Yevgrafov, P. N. Diatropov, N. A. Shchepetilnikov, N. V. Morakhovsky, A. F. Soynov, A. S. Rusinov, writers Musa Akdzhigitov, A. G. Malyskin, A. N. Budishchev, V. I. Yazvitsky, geobotanists I. I. Sprygin and M. V. Kultiassov, as well as Marshal of the Soviet Union M. N. Tukhachevsky.

In 1918, the gymnasium was transformed into a second-level labor school named after V. G. Belinsky, where writer T. Z. Semushkin, stratosphere researcher I. D. Usyskin, and geographer D. A. Alasheev studied.

In 1911, on the centenary of V. G. Belinsky's birth, the first memorial plaque in Penza was installed in the gymnasium's assembly hall.

Writer Ilya Alexandrovich Salov recalls in his memoirs "The Fleeting Years" that the Noble Institute was located on the outskirts of the city, opposite the Upper Gulyan, in a beautiful area adjacent to a clearing, a cut-down oak forest. It was a large and beautiful multi-story building where the students lived. Compared to the wooden one-story house of the gymnasium, the institute looked like a palace: spacious and bright classrooms, a huge bright corridor, a recreation hall, a library, and a large physics room. In the gymnasium, instead, there was only a large courtyard where students were released during breaks. At that time, the director of the institute was someone named P., who had previously headed the Penza Gymnasium, the same one under whom V. G. Belinsky was expelled for incapacity.