The first residential brick building not only in Barnaul, but in the entire mountainous region was built in 1827 for the head of the Altai Mountain District. At that time it was General Pyotr Kozmich Frolov, famous for many innovations and most of all - the creation of the first in Russia cast-iron horse-drawn railroad.

The two-storey house in the style of Russian classicism - with a protruding portal, semi-columns and a portico - was designed for the customer by the architect Ya.N. Popov. The general's estate with a huge garden behind an openwork metal fence occupied an entire block. Before the revolution, 17 chiefs of the Altai mining district managed to live in it.

During a major fire in 1917, the building burned down to the frame and was expanded and reconstructed only by 1926, presumably by the architect M.F.Federovsky. The facade was richly decorated with stucco moldings, the triangular portico was decorated with a sculptural composition by S.R. Nadolsky: a worker and a peasant with labor attributes. The house of the head of the Altai Mining District is recognized as an architectural monument of regional significance.

After the change of power, the Council of Workers 'and Soldiers' Deputies, trade unions (Revolution Palace), okrug, city committee, city executive committee, House of the Red Army, regional executive committee replaced each other in the house of miners ... Since 1961, the city authorities have returned to the building, since 1991 the City Duma is based here and the administration of Barnaul.

The legend about the Blue Lady is connected with the house of the mining and factory bosses. The old general who supposedly lived in the estate out of jealousy immured his young wife in the basement. Since then, the townspeople have met her ghost in the neighboring streets and seen in the windows of the house. And as if a skeleton with scraps of a half-rotted blue dress was found in one of the basement walls when the building was being restored after a fire. This legend became the plot of M. Yudalevich's novel "The Blue Lady" and the libretto of a musical performance.