In 1887 according to the project of the well-known Stavropol architect Feodor Karlovic Knorre on the northeast part of Sofiyevskaya Square the building of the Caucasian diocesan female school was construcred. Three floors, made off the slotted shell rock, leaving a facade on Nevinnomysskaya Street (today Mira St.), the building became at once extraordinary in the provincial center. On the third floor, the house church located in a big hall in honor of the Tikhvin icon of the Mother of God, in 1896 it was renamed into honor of the Intercession of the Theotokos.
Building of the Caucasian diocesan female school. The end of the XIX century.
Meanwhile, the new building became small for 300 pupils and teachers of the school. Architect Adrian Petrovitch Bulygin whose project was approved by the special diocesan commission, offered the option of increasing the area of the building at the expense of an extension on Mitrofanovsky Lane (today Zootekhnichesky Lane).
Adrian P. Bulygin
Graduates of diocesan female school, 1917.
In 1910 construction of the three-floored extension considerably repeating front drawing of the first structure began. Building proceeded more than five years. The building became the grandest in Stavropol: with two main entrances. It was possible to get on the second floor where were class rooms, gymnastic, musical and assembly halls, on wide front staircases from plates of siliceous limestone with painting under bronze, a handrail and the polished hand-rail from an ash-tree.
In a ground floor there was a spiritual library, rooms for teachers and the chief of school. The third floor was occupied by sleeping rooms for 500 pupils where it was possible to get both on stone stairs, and by means of the first electric lift in the city of plant «Alfred Gutman and Co».
The building was warmed during winter time by heaters of the firm «K. Ziegel». In a yard with the asphalted paths there was the central boiler room with steam-engines from Germany. In the estate of the school there were a two-floored stone hospital, garage and a stable with a carriage shed. The total cost of all structures exceeded 500 thousand silver rubles.
In 1915 according to Grigory Kuskov's project the house church of school was reconstructed: the ceiling was lifted, the grand dome with a gilded cross crowning was established. Master Dundukin gilded an iconostasis with more than thirty icons and the Holy doors. House church for the sake of the Intercession of the Theotokos, consecrated in 1899 by bishop Agafador, visited not only pupils of diocesan female school, but also all ecclesiastical and secular persons coming with visits to the provincial center.
In days of World War I a building of the Stavropol female diocesan school transferred to provincial Zemstvo committee for placement of wounded soldiers.
In 1920 in the former diocesan school the agriculture and land improvement institute was established in the diocesan school , and in 1923, after institute closing, agricultural technical school settled down.
In 1932 Moscow Institute of sheep breeding, later rearranged into Agrarian University, moved into a building of the former diocesan school.
