The first section of the street, from Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt to Leo Tolstoy Street, was laid out in the 1880s and named Lyceum Street on April 16, 1887. Nearby, at 21 Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt, was the Imperial Alexander Lyceum, which was moved here in 1843 from Tsarskoye Selo (before the move, the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum). On October 6, 1923, in connection with the death of the German physicist W. Roentgen, a Nobel Prize winner and the first researcher of X-rays, his name was immortalized by renaming the highway Roentgen Street. The renaming was also due to the fact that the Radium Institute had been located in house 1 on the street since 1922. The second section of the street, between Leo Tolstoy and Chapayev streets, is a later one; it began to be laid out and built up according to the decision of the Executive Committee of the Leningrad City Council on September 18, 1944, and a through passage appeared there only in the 1970s.

At 4 Rentgena, there is the apartment building of G.F. Eilers. The building was built in the style of northern Art Nouveau, especially for the family of the 2nd guild of G.F. Eilers. Fyodor Ivanovich Lidval participated in the construction of the building. Architect Lidval is the author of many iconic places in the city. Among others, the Astoria Hotel on St. Isaac's Square and the Tolstoy House.