Preparation for Admission to the Main Engineering School

After placing his sons for exam preparation at the Main Engineering School in Captain Kostomarov's boarding house, Mikhail Andreyevich Dostoevsky left back for Moscow on May 26 or 27. The historical address of the boarding house: Ligovsky Canal Embankment, house of the 3rd guild merchant Nikita Ivanovich Reshetnikov, No. 66. Captain Kostomarov’s boarding house. Modern address: Ligovsky Prospect, No. 65. The house has not survived (the current building was constructed in 1912–1913). The address is recorded in a memorial note by A.G. Dostoevskaya, made by her in the Notebook of 1876–1884: “Dostoevsky studied under Coronad Filippovich Kostomarov, on Ligovsky Canal, Reshetnikov’s house.”

“The house was two-storied, stone, with a mezzanine,” writes Basina, reproducing in her book a drawing of the building from an old 1834 plan — “Besides the captain himself and his family, there lived pupils here, who now, together with Mikhail and Fyodor, numbered ten.”

The pupils of Kostomarov lived in the wing.

Fyodor Dostoevsky lived in the house on Ligovsky Canal from May 1837 until January 16, 1838, when, after enrollment in the Main Engineering School, as a 3rd class conductor he was assigned to live in the Engineering Castle on barracks duty. Mikhail, apparently, lived in Kostomarov’s boarding house until January 25, when he was enrolled as a 2nd class conductor in the St. Petersburg engineering team and sent to live in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

Sources:

M. Basina: “The Life of Dostoevsky. Through the Twilight of White Nights”

Boris Nikolaevich Tikhomirov: DOSTOEVSKY’S ADDRESSES IN PETERSBURG: CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF SOURCES AND EXPERTISE OF LOCAL HISTORY PUBLICATIONS

Evgenia Sarukhanyan: “Dostoevsky in Petersburg”