The stone church was built in 1783 with funding from the Tara merchant Yakov Permenov. The decoration of the cathedral was also contributed by the second guild merchant Pyotr Vasilyevich Sedelnikov. The church was located in the elevated part of the city of Tara, near the descent to the Arkarka River, where it flows into the Irtysh, on the former Nikolskaya Street, now Soviet.

The building, designed in the shape of a "ship," was single-story and included a temple with an apse, a refectory, and a narthex with an octagonal bell tower. The church was topped with an octagonal baroque dome, crowned with a lantern and a small dome on a high neck. In 1884, the icons in the chapels were restored with funds from the Tara merchant Fyodor Ivanovich Shcherbakov.

Since 1832, St. Nicholas the Wonderworker Cathedral had two chapels: the right one dedicated to the apostles Peter and Paul, and the left one to the holy martyr Haralampius. The walls of the church were smooth, with pilasters at the corners, and above the windows were frames in the form of intricate cartouches. The completion of the church and bell tower had the shape of a dome, with volute-shaped attics rising above the cornice, featuring lucarnes in the center and decorative finials at the corners. Above the dome was an octagonal lantern with four windows, topped with a complex small dome. At the corners of the refectory and above the altar were finials. The church was crowned with nine round finials with carved eight-pointed crosses. In the main church, there were choirs arranged on the central vault. The height of the church was 12 fathoms, its length was 18, and width was 5 fathoms 2 arshins; the height of the bell tower was 15 fathoms. The church housed six bells, the largest weighing 108 poods 8 pounds and bearing an inscription.

The iconostasis of the main church was an ancient four-tiered one with Corinthian order carvings, painted green, with gilded carvings. The iconostases in the refectory were three-tiered, with silver-plated pilasters and capitals, and the royal gates were also carved and silver-plated. The icons were made in the ancient Greek style and were housed in gilded and silver-plated frames and vestments. The church stored two silver altar crosses with relics of saints and three Gospels published in 1735 and 1748.

In 1921, the church's property was nationalized. In 1922, the community rented the church.

On June 20, 1935, the Tara district executive committee decided to terminate the rental agreement with the Tikhon community, as it refused to share the building with the Renovationist community. It was impossible to hold services for two confessions simultaneously in a single-story building. On March 13, 1938, the church was closed, and the building was repurposed for cultural needs. At the end of March 1938, the cathedral was dismantled.

In the winter of 2007, employees of the archaeology sector of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences processed and prepared archival and cartographic materials on the historical center of the city of Tara, which allowed for archaeological work at the presumed site of the cathedral in August of the same year. Research on the urban cultural layer using test pits revealed the foundation of the church. A cross was erected at the site of the former cathedral.