Sergey Donatovich Dovlatov was born in Ufa, lived in Leningrad, Tallinn, New York, but his heart always returned to the room of the communal apartment in house No. 23 on Rubinstein Street. There is a plaque hanging on the house - it is from the authorities; in the yard, on the walls of the house and on the entrance - graffiti depicting a flying saucer and a huge typewriter - this is from the people.

The house took the second hundred years — it was built in 1912 by architect A. Baryshnikov. After the construction was completed, a rich timber merchant Antip Efremov (the father of the famous Soviet paleotologist and at the same time science fiction writer Ivan Efremov) drove into it.

Sergey Dovlatov's apartment is not in the best condition — since the time of the writer's residence, only the fireplace and the window facing the courtyard have been preserved here.

What you can see is the records in the house book. They are allowed to look at officials from the check-in and registration department, which is in the Central district of the city. The first one dates back to 1944, when Sergey Mechik (the writer's real name) arrived in St. Petersburg from evacuation (in 1941 his family was sent to Ufa). It is followed by a mark from 1958 — then he took a double name — Dovlatov-Mecik, and the next is information about his move to a separate apartment in the neighborhood, in house No. 22. From his last apartment, he went into exile. Now it is apartment No. 29, its residents, out of respect for the writer's memory, still do not remove traces of spilled port wine on the parquet floor - they say, “these are Dovlatovskie”.

The memorial plaque on house No. 23 was opened on September 3, 2007. The solemn ceremony was attended by representatives of the city authorities, former colleagues, artists. Widow Elena came from New York with her daughter Ekaterina, the head of the Sergey Dovlatov International Foundation. The author of the memorial sign is Alexey Arkhipov, a member of the Union of Artists This is the second plaque in honor of the writer. The first was installed in 2003 in Tallinn. In the house on Vabriku Street (formerly — st. Rabchinsky) Dovlatov lived for three years — from 1972 to 1975. The author of the idea is artist Alexander Florensky, a member of the St. Petersburg Mitki group, performed by sculptor Irina Ryatsepp. The initiator of its installation was the Estonian public committee “Dovlatov memo”.

On September 4, 2016, a monument to the work of Vyacheslav Bukhaev was unveiled near the house No. 23 on Rubinshteina Street. It was timed to coincide with the anniversary of Dovlatov, who would have celebrated his 75th birthday on the eve of the ceremony. The writer's widow Elena, who, together with her daughter Ekaterina, specially flew to St. Petersburg for this occasion, noted that the forty years she spent in the United States, as if she had never left this house is in the center of St. Petersburg.