The Nativity Church was built by the Stroganov merchants, which is why it is often called Stroganov Church. The church is a valuable monument of the Russian baroque of the late 17th-early 18th centuries. It stands out among other churches built by G. Stroganov on account of its monumentality, exquisite and sumptuous decorations made in minute detail, an organic blend with the bold design of the structural elements and the presence of two cast crowns on the central dome.
The church was dedicated in 1719, and three years later Emperor Peter the Great visited Nizhny Novgorod and attended a service at the Stroganov Church. Thereafter the church was shut down. One theory has it that Peter the Great spotted among the local icons (which survived to this day) two icons that had been ordered to the craftsman Karavak for Peter and Paul's Cathedral in St Petersburg, but had been secretly bought by G. Stroganov.
The church was on fire several times (in 1768, 1782 and 1788), and was built and restored by famous Russian architects A. Betankur and I. Yefimov (1820-1823), L. Dahl and R. Kilevein (1870s-1880s). In 1913 the church was fully restored from inside and outside.
In the 1930s the church was closed. During the Second World War it housed a storehouse for pharmaceuticals, owing to which the iconostasis has survived. All the other decorations have been lost, looted and destroyed. In the 1960s the Stroganov Church was handed over to house a branch of the local history and ethnography museum, which occupied it until 1993.
The unique iconostasis has been preserved and is one of the most valuable in Russia in artistic terms. Of the 46 late 17th century icons, 43 have survived.
On June 1993 the Stroganov Church was rededicated by Metropolitan Nicholas of Nizhny Novgorod and Arzamas.