The house was built in the 1830s by Nadezhda Fyodorovna Selivanova, who held the position of court counselor. Later, it passed to her son Alexander Nikiforovich Selivanov, also a court counselor, who sold it in 1850 to Lieutenant General Alexander Nikolaevich Arapov, a well-known winemaker and provincial leader of the nobility. A few years after Arapov's death on November 8, 1872, the building was rented by the Second Men's Gymnasium, which opened on September 1, 1874, based on a six-grade progymnasium. At that time, the house was owned by the son of the previous owner, chamberlain of His Majesty's Court Alexander Alexandrovich Arapov, who became the honorary guardian of the gymnasium.

Notable cultural figures studied at the gymnasium, including director Vsevolod Emilievich Meyerhold (in 1884 and 1895), silent film actor Ivan Ilyich Mozzhukhin (in 1899 and 1907), writer and theater scholar Yuri Vasilievich Sobolev (in 1896 and 1906), as well as writer and theater critic Nikolai Dmitrievich Volkov (in 1904 and 1912).