[2] This apartment block, designed for high rank employees at the Commissariat of Finance (shortened to Narkomfin) was an opportunity for Ginzburg to try out many of the theories advanced by the Constructivist OSA group between 1926 and 1930 on architectural form and collective living.

By offering Communal facilities such as kitchens, creches and laundry as part of the block, the tenants were encouraged into a more socialist and, by taking women out of their traditional roles, feminist way of life.

[3] On the other hand, architects of the 1920s had to face the social reality of an overcrowded socialist city: any single-family apartment unit with more than one room would eventually be converted to a multi-family kommunalka.

The sponsor of the building, Commissar of Finance Nikolay Alexandrovich Milyutin, enjoyed a penthouse (originally planned as a communal recreation area).

After the start of the Five Year Plan and Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power, its collectivist and feminist ideas were rejected as 'Leftist' or Trotskyist.

In the 1930s, the ground floor, which was originally left free and suspended with pilotis, was filled with flats to help alleviate Moscow's severe housing shortage, while a planned adjoining block was built in the eclectic Stalinist style.

The vicissitudes of the building were charted in Victor Buchli's book An Archaeology of Socialism which takes the flats and their inhabitants as a starting point for an analysis of Soviet 'material culture'.

[8][9] Despite the Russian "Cultural Heritage Monument" code prohibiting any major re-planning of internal walls and partitions, there were accusations that illegal renovations were taking place.

[10] In 2016, the building began renovation under the guidance of Alexei Ginsburg, after development company Liga Prav bought it from an auction.