At the back of the plot numbered 8, behind an iron fence, stands a bright three-story building with a decorative attic and elegant stucco, known as the "Mariinsky School." The house, which has undergone numerous changes in the 20th century, is now under threat of demolition or major reconstruction.

The history of the plot begins in the 18th century when part of it was owned by Sergey Avraamovich Lopukhin, the son of "court nobleman" Avraam Nikitich Lopukhin and a cousin of Empress Evdokiya, the first wife of Peter the First. In 1711, the property passed to his daughter Mavra, Countess Sheremeteva, and remained in this family until the 1750s, until the plots were merged. The owner of another part of the plot, Timofey Nadarzhinsky, was the spiritual advisor to Tsar Peter. Research shows that the wealth of the white clergy in Russia was not known until the early 18th century, and the first priest with a remarkable fortune was indeed Nadarzhinsky.

The merged plot was acquired in the 1750s by Vasily Mikhailovich Yeropkin, president of the Revision Collegium, who built the house that became the basis of the current building. Almost half a century later, the house was owned by the father of Catherine the Great's favorite, Platon Zubov, the chief prosecutor of the Senate, known for his corruption.

A watercolor by D. Indeytsev, painted in 1850, depicts this house as the most luxurious among other buildings on the Sofiyskaya Embankment. It likely became so under the last private owners, the Durassovs. The three-story building is adorned with a Corinthian portico, flanked by sculptures on both sides. This element, repeated in the architecture of the Pashkov House, suggests that the project was authored by Durassov's neighbor, architect Bazhenov.

In 1860, when the Ladies' Committee for the Poor was looking for a new place for the school, there could not have been a better house to find. The Mariinsky School, named in honor of the prematurely deceased daughter of one of the patrons, opened a new chapter in the history of the house.

At the Mariinsky School, girls from poor families received an education and training to become governesses. The teachers here were of high caliber: professors from Moscow University and, in the musical field, the founder of the conservatory, Nikolai Grigoryevich Rubinstein. Sergey Vasilievich Rachmaninoff dedicated seven years to teaching at the school. According to the memories of the students, he was strict in lessons but happily accompanied the school choir and organized piano concerts. Specifically for the choir, Rachmaninoff wrote six songs to the words of Nekrasov, Lermontov, and other poets. The metaphysical connection to the musicality of the place is also emphasized by the fact that Tchaikovsky's brother was married in the school’s chapel. This means that Pyotr Ilyich also visited this house!

After the revolution, the building became more known in literature and memoirs than in music. The house was transferred to the 19th school named after Belinsky, where children from the famous House on the Embankment studied. Here, Yuri Trifonov spent his school years, describing the school and its students in his novel "The House on the Embankment." After the war, musician Andrei Makarevich studied at the school, managing to graduate despite conflicts with the principal over his long hair and "beatnik" clothing.

In the 1970s, "Mosproject-2" moved into the building, among whose employees were renowned restorers and historians E.V. Trubetskaya and A.A. Klimenko, who saved many buildings from demolition.

In 2008, the Mariinsky School building was defended when it was sentenced to demolition. Now a large hotel holding claims the territory around the house, planning to reconstruct building 8 and construct new buildings on the sites of buildings 10 and 12. Despite the lack of an approved project from the Department of Cultural Heritage, the building is protected and surrounded by barriers from the company Strabag, known for demolishing historic buildings in Moscow.