In the early 19th century, the estate at the corner of Bolshoy Ordynsky Lane, house No. 50, belonged to Varvara Vasilyevna Kurbatova, the wife of a state councilor. The main house faced Pyatnitskaya Street, and behind it were wings and service buildings.

In the 1850s, the plot was acquired by the Lepeshkin merchants, owners of the neighboring territory, who soon built a new house on the site of the old buildings. In 1893, architect V. A. Mazyryin added two floors to the building, and a vocational school opened here, established in 1887 by Varvara Yakovlevna Lepeshkina, the daughter-in-law of industrialist Semyon Longinovich Lepeshkin. The school trained nursery teachers, seamstresses, and lace-makers and was named in honor of her deceased daughter Varvara. It provided girls from low-income families the opportunity to gain a profession and find employment. According to Varvara Yakovlevna's will, the building and a capital of 500,000 rubles for its maintenance were transferred to the city. The school accepted girls aged 11 to 14 who had completed primary urban education, offering both vocational and general education. The school was closed after the revolution.

In 1938, the former building of the Lepeshkin School housed the Institute of Theoretical Geophysics, led by the famous polar explorer, academician Otto Yulievich Schmidt, who was popular at the time.

On July 23, 1941, the building was destroyed as a result of a German bombing during the Great Patriotic War, and it was not restored after the war. Today, on this site, along Pyatnitskaya Street, there is a fence and a lawn with trees in front of the remaining annex, which was part of the old Lepeshkin house built in 1885 according to the design of architect V. V. Barkov.