Dostoevsky did not give the exact address of the house where Sonya lived, but according to researchers of his work, the novel accurately describes the building of the Treasury Chamber on the Catherine Canal.

According to Dostoevsky's description, Sonya lived in a completely disgusting place: “It was a large room, but extremely low. The sleepy room looked like a barn, looked like a very irregular quadrangle, and that gave it something ugly. The wall with three windows, facing the ditch, cut the room at random, causing one corner, terribly sharp, to run deep into the interior, so that, in low light, it could not even be seen well; the other corner was already too ugly stupid. There was almost no furniture in this whole large room. The yellowish, smeared, and painted wallpaper turned black in all corners; it must have been damp and foul in the winter. Poverty was visible; even the bed had no curtains.”

The state institution was located here in the middle of the 19th century (formerly, the State Chamber was located on Gorokhovaya Street) until 1918 (when this state body was abolished altogether).

The appearance of the building on the current Griboedov Canal has changed a lot compared to the century before last. Thus, in Soviet times, the house was built on two more floors (now it is a four-story building), and the facade decoration was changed to the so-called “Stalinist classicism”.