The three-room apartment on the upper, fifth floor was the first separate dwelling of Alexander Blok and his wife. Their family life did not go well right away, and the move of the young to a separate apartment, new, smelling of damp plaster, with windows into the yard-well, did not contribute to strengthening relations.

Beggars and cripples came to the yard, narrow and tall, almost every day, played the barrel organ, danced and sang sad long songs — for charity. And against this bleak background, both spouses suddenly broke out romances, she had affairs with the poet Chulkov, he had an actress Volokhova, a prototype of the Snow Mask and the inspiration for the poems of the Faina cycle. But the poet remains a poet, he reads to the actors of the Komissarzhevskaya Theater a new play “The King on the Square”, censorship does not allow it to be staged. Then his other play, “The Balaganchik”, is staged in the theater, and it causes a sensation — from delight to reproach.

Actors and poets gather in Blok's apartment, walk noisily and stay at night. Here, by order of the magazine “Golden Fleece”, artist K. A. Somov draws a famous portrait of Blok with graphite and colored pencils, gouache. This is how the year that the poet lived in this apartment passes.