It is commonly believed that "Raskolnikov's house" is house No. 5 — the corner house at the intersection of Sredny Meshchansky and Stolyarny Lane. Today it is 19 Grazhdanskaya Street (corner of Grazhdanskaya St. and Przhevalsky St., 19/5). In the mid-19th century, this house belonged to one of the heirs of the carriage master Joachim and was five stories tall (now, after major renovations, it is four stories). From the archway, you need to turn immediately to the right; at the corner, there is a door to the staircase described in the novel. However, since the mid-19th century, tenement houses resembled each other, as did the spiral dark staircases; in the archways, there was usually a door to the janitor's room, and so on. Thus, Raskolnikov's house could also be considered the house where Dostoevsky himself lived. "The house was large, with many small apartments inhabited by merchants and craftsmen. It immediately reminded me of the house in the novel 'Crime and Punishment' where the hero Raskolnikov lived," recalls Dostoevsky's wife. However, everyone can decide for themselves which house suits Raskolnikov better. For Dostoevsky, the "image" of the house was important; he hardly set out to record anything with documentary accuracy. It is worth noting that when describing the dwellings of his characters, Dostoevsky sometimes confuses the floors on which they live (Sonia’s room is sometimes on the 3rd floor, sometimes on the 2nd; the police station is on the 4th and on the 3rd), changes the arrangement of rooms. For example, Raskolnikov's cramped room window faces both the street (he hears cries from the street "under the window") and the courtyard. Much more important for Dostoevsky is that Raskolnikov lives in an unthinkable room for habitation: in tenement houses, absolutely everything was rented out, any corners, attics, basements. Raskolnikov "looked at his cramped room with hatred. It was a tiny cage, about six steps long, looking the most miserable with its yellowish, dusty, and everywhere peeling wallpaper, and so low that a slightly tall person would feel scared in it, and it seemed as if you would soon hit your head on the ceiling...". The characters in the novel repeatedly call this cramped room a coffin, a cabin, a chest. And Raskolnikov's mother will say: "I am sure that you became a melancholic half because of the apartment... Yes, the apartment contributed a lot... I thought about that too...".

Dostoevsky, like no one else, knew perfectly well what life in such a cramped room meant: he spent eight months in a solitary cell of the Alekseevsky ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress, under investigation in the Petrashevsky case: "... eternal thinking and only thinking, without any external impressions to revive and sustain thought — is hard!

I feel as if I am under an air pump, from which the air is being sucked out. Everything has left me into my head, and from the head into thought...", he wrote to his brother from the casemate.

Ten times in the novel, Raskolnikov will leave his cramped room and ten times return to it. And on the eleventh time, he will leave it forever — when he goes to "betray himself." Throughout the novel, he wanders around the city, twists and turns, confuses the trail. Perhaps that is why Dostoevsky liked corner houses — because his characters could approach them from different sides.

Sources:

Vera Biron: Dostoevsky's Petersburg