New address of the writer: Malaya Meshchanskaya Street, corner of the Catherine Canal, house of the general's daughter Anastasia Alekseevna Astafyeva, No. 1/61, apartment 4. Modern address: Kaznacheyskaya Street, corner of the Griboedov Canal, No. 1/61. The house has been preserved, built in 1826, the left part was rebuilt in 1847. Dostoevsky's rental contract for the apartment is known: “The first day of September, eighteen hundred and sixty-one. I, the undersigned retired Second Lieutenant Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, have concluded this contract with the authorized representative of the guardian of my underage daughter Anastasia Alekseevna Astafyeva, General Lieutenant Alexey Nikolaevich Astafyev’s daughter, Court Councillor Mikhail Ivanovich Popov, that I, Dostoevsky, have rented an apartment in the house belonging to the aforementioned Astafyeva, located in the 2nd Admiralty Part, 3rd quarter, house No. 118, apartment entrance No. 4, on the second floor, consisting of five rooms with a kitchen, for a term from the above date for one year, i.e., until the first of September, eighteen hundred and sixty-two, with a payment of four hundred and eighty rubles silver per year…”

In this document, house No. 118 is indicated according to the continuous numbering of houses within the police district, which was adopted in St. Petersburg before 1834 but was preserved as a remnant in a number of documents and printed editions until the 1870s. According to the directory “House Numbering in St. Petersburg,” in the 2nd Admiralty Part, the former house No. 118 from the mid-1830s corresponds to house No. 2 on Malaya Meshchanskaya Street and No. 54 on the embankment of the Catherine Canal. In the new numbering system adopted in St. Petersburg in 1858, this is the corner house No. 1 on Malaya Meshchanskaya and No. 61 on the Catherine Canal.

Dostoevsky settled in Astafyeva’s house because since the mid-1850s (specifically from September 1, 1855), his elder brother Mikhail Mikhailovich lived here (at that time it was the house of the widow of Court Councillor Ponomareva — Astafyeva’s grandmother, who became the homeowner by inheritance rights in 1859). Dostoevsky’s niece recalled (as recounted by Nechaeva): “When Fyodor Dostoevsky arrived at the end of 1860 from Tver to Petersburg, Mikhail Dostoevsky’s family lived in the house at the corner of Meshchanskaya Street and the Catherine Canal. Their apartment was on the third floor, and on the first floor there was a warehouse for the factory’s goods (referring to Mikhail Dostoevsky’s tobacco factory). The Dostoevskys, upon arrival, settled on the second floor, where Mikhail Mikhailovich’s children often stopped by on their way.” The entrance to the Dostoevskys’ apartment was from the Catherine Canal; this main entrance was later bricked up.

Dostoevsky’s addresses in Petersburg: a critical analysis of sources… Dostoevsky lived in the house at the corner of Malaya Meshchanskaya and the Catherine Canal from September 1, 1861, until early August 1863 (the date of his departure abroad). From 1861 to 1863, the editorial office of the magazine “Vremya” was located in Astafyeva’s house. “Vremya” (1861–1863) — a “literary and political magazine” — was one of the notable periodicals of the 1860s. It was published in St. Petersburg by Mikhail and Fyodor Dostoevsky. On June 18, 1860, Mikhail Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, the elder brother of the famous writer, submitted an application to the St. Petersburg Censorship Committee to publish a monthly literary and political magazine “Vremya.” The application was approved on July 3, 1860, and in September, newspapers published the “Announcement of the publication of the magazine ‘Vremya’ in 1861” and its “Program.” The official editor of the magazine was declared to be M.M. Dostoevsky. Many actual editorial duties were taken on by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The core editorial circle of “Vremya” included, besides the Dostoevsky brothers, Apollon Alexandrovich Grigoriev and Nikolai Nikolaevich Strakhov. From January 1861, “Vremya” became one of the thick Petersburg magazines and soon rivaled the most popular periodicals: in just its first year, “Vremya” matched the number of subscribers of “Otechestvennye Zapiski” and “Russkoye Slovo” (about 4,000 subscribers) and took third place behind the two absolute leaders — “Sovremennik” by N.A. Nekrasov (7,000 subscribers) and “Russky Vestnik” by M.N. Katkov (5,700 subscribers).

Sources:

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

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

http://family-history.ru/material/biography/mesto/dostoyevsky