The old estate of Prince Sergey Nikolaevich Golitsyn was located at the corner of Znamenka and Malaya Znamenka Lane since 1776. It was destroyed in the fire of 1812 and was not restored to its former appearance.

On the plan from May 19, 1861, the former large plot was divided into two parts: one of them passed to Collegiate Counselor Alexandra Vasilyevna Kaminskaya, who built new stone buildings on the site of the burned structures. The next owner was hereditary honorary citizen Nikolai Pavlovich Malyutin, who sold the estate on January 29, 1877, to the wife of a doctor, Olga Ivanovna Betling. She had a shed facing Znamenka, while the rest of the plot was used as a public firewood storage.

On February 21, 1896, Malyutin sold the estate to provincial secretary Pavel Nikolayevich Lesli. A year later, he decided to demolish the stone fences and build a four-story stone building along Znamenka. However, not completing the construction, Pavel Nikolayevich transferred the plot to Moscow merchant Ivan Yevdokimovich Ponomarev.

Ivan Yevdokimovich Ponomarev, born on October 12, 1837, and died on September 18, 1900, was the owner of several manufactories and a decisive and enterprising person. In 1899, architect Konstantin Fyodorovich Burov built a two-story house here with a corner bay window. The mansion turned out to be original, in the style of classicized eclecticism. The corner part, cut at a 45-degree angle, is decorated with a rectangular bay window with a cartouche-shell above the central window and narrow slit-like windows on the sides. The facade on Znamenka is diverse: ten windows on the second floor are designed differently, two of them are adorned with cartouches with shells, and the second-to-last window on the right is widened, topped with a triangular pediment with a mask. The facade on Malaya Znamenka Lane has six windows.

The house was equipped with the latest technology: steam heating, baths, sinks, closets, and urinals. The construction was carried out very quickly, but the owner did not have time to live in the new house, as he died on September 18, 1900. A year earlier, on September 4, 1899, in the midst of construction and project approvals, he made a will, leaving the estate to his wife Lyudmila Vasilyevna Ponomareva and children Nina, Alexei, and Sofia equally. In 1904, the heirs sold the mansion to hereditary honorary citizen Grigory Martynovich Arafelov from Baku, the owner of the 'Oil Industry and Trade Society G.M. Arafelov and Co.', engaged in the extraction, processing, and trade of oil and petroleum products.

The end of one of the service buildings in the courtyard, facing Znamenka, was adorned until 2000 with a relief portico featuring the German inscription 'ARCHITECTURA', Masonic symbols in the panels, and a lion mask with a semicircular basin.

In 1913, architect A.T. Izmirov reconstructed the old building on Malaya Znamenka Lane for G. Arafelov, giving it neo-empire decor. Since then, the pediment has housed the monogram of the last owner. In the courtyard, there was a small textile factory of the Arafelovs in the service buildings.

After the revolution in the 1920s, the estate was occupied by sections of the Communist (Socialist) Academy under the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. Today, it houses the Academic Library of Natural Sciences.