The architectural and ethnographic museum-reserve "Shcholkovo Farm," formerly known as the Museum of Architecture and Everyday Life of the Peoples of the Nizhny Novgorod Volga Region, is located in the Soviet district of Nizhny Novgorod within a 38-hectare forest park. Until 2014, it was part of the Nizhny Novgorod State Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve.

Originally, the farm was named Makhotin in honor of its founder, Nizhny Novgorod police chief A. E. Makhotin, a participant in the Patriotic War of 1812, and was established in the 1850s. In the 1870s, it was acquired by a grocer named Shcholkovo, whose name became fixed in the city's toponymy. Local historian D.N. Smirnov offers another version: the farm belonged to a Tolstoyan colony led by statistician D. F. Shcholk, after whom it was named.

The creation of the museum was initiated by a decree from the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR in December 1958. In 1959, architect S. L. Agafonov and art historian M. P. Zvantsev developed a sketch of the museum's master plan, which was not implemented. Ten years later, in 1969, architect Y. G. Samoylov created a master plan for the museum, tied to the land allocated by the Gorky Oblast Executive Committee. The museum opened on June 3, 1973, and was dedicated to preserving and studying cultural heritage through ancient architectural monuments.

From 1975 to 2002, the museum was headed by Faina Anfimovna Kormukhina, the mother of singer Olga Kormukhina. Thanks to her efforts and organizational skills, the museum achieved significant success. She participated in ethnographic expeditions with the Gorky Engineering and Construction Institute, which allowed for the collection of rich material and the creation of an extensive database on architectural monuments of wooden architecture in the Nizhny Novgorod region.

On January 1, 2014, an autonomous architectural and ethnographic museum-reserve "Shcholkovo Farm" was established based on the museum. The museum's exhibition includes rural architecture from the 19th century: residential huts, barns, mills, and churches from the 17th-18th centuries, relocated from the northern districts of the Nizhny Novgorod region. The facades of the huts are adorned with traditional carvings, and the interiors of the houses have been restored with authentic peasant household items.