Immediately after the liberation of the city from the Nazi invaders, the city library was opened in the place that miraculously survived on Lenin Street, the House of Peter I. Her first employee was Galina Ivanovna Tchaikovskaya. According to the memoirs of a young reader (Natasha Guretskaya, born in 1949), at first the building housed several departments of the city library, including children’s. Later in the House of Peter I remained only a library for children. The largest room, to the left of the entrance, was occupied by a reading room, a small room in the center was a subscription, and a small room to the right was the director’s office. Since 1948, Nina Alekseevna Korzo (headed the branch until 1982) became the head of the library. She was a very smart and beautiful woman. But the favorite worker of the library, according to the memoirs of Natalia Mikhailovna, was Elena Nikolaeva.
In the 1950s – 1960s the most frequent guests of the library were pupils of the 8th and 7th schools, as well as children of the central streets of the city. In winter children's crafts from plasticine always stood on the windowsills and in the summer on the summer terrace in front of the building on the right children could read children's books and magazines all day.
In 1964 the library was given the name of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, and in front of the building was erected a monument to the famous Russian writer. In 1997, the children's library, which turns 70 this year, moved to the Sverdlova Street and the famous House of Peter I began to prepare for the opening of the museum exhibition in it.