Riga Polytechnic School, also known as Polytechnikum zu Riga in German and Rīgas Politehniskā augstskola in Latvian, was founded in Riga in 1862. In 1896, it became the Riga Polytechnic Institute.

The initiative to create an educational institution with a technical focus belonged to the Riga Stock Exchange and the Riga City Council, with the support of Governor-General A. A. Suvorov. Emperor Alexander II approved the regulations for the Riga Polytechnic School on May 16 (28), 1861. Initially, the school operated as a private secondary school funded by the provincial nobility of the Baltic region.

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Riga Polytechnic Institute included eight departments, among which the commercial department stood out. The "Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron" noted that the commercial education course at the Riga Polytechnic School reached a high level, comparable to the top commercial schools in France and Antwerp. The school taught exclusively specialized subjects, and admission was only open to those who had completed six grades of general education institutions. The training included both theoretical and practical preparation for professional activities. Among the subjects taught were commercial geography and statistics, commercial arithmetic, office management and accounting, political economy, finance science, encyclopedic chemistry, history of trade, establishment of Riga trade, history of the national economy, commercial, bill of exchange and maritime law, commodity science, encyclopedic physics, and commercial practice.