From the very beginning of the Tambov fortress, at the entrance from the Moscow road into the city, there was a fairground located by the Nikolsky bridge over the Studenets river. In 1786, a wooden trading house was built here, and in 1788, under the guidance of the head of the Tambov governorate G.R. Derzhavin, a stone bridge was erected to replace the old one. After a fire, the trading house was damaged, and from 1824, merchants, deprived of convenient places for trade in the center, began to petition for the construction of new brick trading rows, offering their own funds for this purpose.

It was planned that the new trading house would face Znamenskaya Street (now October Street). However, the merchants found this location disadvantageous, as the building would be "back" to the old trading house, creating inconveniences for traders and buyers. They proposed to build it in line with the old one along the street leading from the stone bridge. The project was changed, and in 1836, the construction of a complex of shops began. The western part of Cathedral Square turned into a large fairground with numerous trading rows, a booth, and temporary stalls.

The trading houses built at that time in Russian cities, thanks to their artistic merits, served as decorations for them. The trading house in Tambov, with its powerful colonnade supporting a heavy entablature and an eight-column portico in the center, looked expressive and monumental.

Nevertheless, historians of urban planning and architecture believe that the emergence of the new trading complex worsened the composition of the city center. Firstly, the cathedral ended up behind the trading house. Secondly, the delivery and storage of goods now took place in the main city square. To hide the service yard, public buildings surrounded it in the second half of the 19th century.

During the Great Patriotic War, cargo trucks were repaired in the premises of the trading house, and in 1956, it was reconstructed according to the project of architect V.G. Samorodov. At that time, the building, which housed GUM, was expanded with an annex and transformed from a two-story into a one-story building. Capital artists were invited to design the interiors.