The building that housed the Ponomarev Gymnasium was constructed in the mid-19th century by the merchant's son Iov Stepanovich Samarin. At the end of the same century, it was acquired by retired notary Viktor Nikolaevich Umnov, who owned several houses on Moskovskaya Street.

On September 15, 1907, a private second-grade school with a course in men's classical progymnasium began operating in this building. It was established by state councilor Dmitry Alexeyevich Zakharin, who passed away that same year. The head of the school was appointed to be the diocesan inspector of church-parish schools of the Penza province, candidate of theology, state councilor Sergey Afanasevich Ponomarev.

In 1909, the school was named the private men's progymnasium of S.A. Ponomarev, and the following year it became a gymnasium with an eight-year term of study.

The fame of educational institutions is often attributed to their graduates. For the 3rd Penza Men's Gymnasium, more commonly known as the Ponomarev Gymnasium, the most famous graduate was Anatoly Borisovich Mariengof. He was an imagist poet and the founder of imagism, which originated in Penza, where the first imagist collection "Exodus" was published in 1918. Mariengof was also a playwright and a friend of Sergey Yesenin, about whom he left memories and to whom Yesenin dedicated poems.

One of Mariengof's friends at the gymnasium was Ivan Starcev, who studied a class lower. He became a well-known bibliographer and author of collections on children's, artistic, and Western literature. Their company also included Grigory Kolobov, who later lived in Moscow with Mariengof and Yesenin. He worked in the Transport and Material Department of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and had a salon-car, in which his friends, including Sergey Yesenin, often traveled.

After the revolution, the building of the Ponomarev Gymnasium housed the city and regional Komsomol committees, and from the 1970s until 1982, it was home to the Penza Music College.