At one time, Blagoveshchenskaya Square consisted of two squares: the main Blagoveschenskaya and the smaller Seminarskaya, which were later merged under a single name.
Seminarskaya was the name given to the square in front of the building that today houses the Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy, and which in pre-revolutionary times was a theological seminary, built in 1831. In its day, the Nizhny Novgorod Seminary was visited by Alexander II and Tsarevich Nicholas — the future Emperor Nicholas II — on high-profile occasions. In the seminary's courtyard stood a church which, like many of the city's churches, was destroyed under Soviet power.
A number of distinguished figures of the past studied at the seminary: the critic Dobrolyubov, and academics Znamensky, Bogorodsky, and Ilyinsky. The daughter of one of the seminary's teachers became a well-known explorer: Alexandra Potanina took part in her husband's expeditions through Mongolia, Tibet, and China, conducting observations and compiling scholarly notes alongside him. She went on to appear in encyclopedic dictionaries as a scholar, explorer, ethnographer, and botanist, whose scientific works were published by the Geographical Division of the Russian Society of Friends of Natural Science, Anthropology, and Ethnography.
At the point where the Upper Volga Embankment met Seminarskaya Square, a corner building was constructed at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. Before the revolution it housed the offices of the Volga steamship company; today it is home to the House of the Architect. The building was notable for its artistically and structurally innovative design for its time, and was built to an exceptionally high standard of durability.