Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary … about how many Edgar Allan Poe sites there are on the East Coast. I’d been on a road trip for over a year as I made my way up the East Coast and started to become confused. Every major city I visited seemed to have an Edgar Allan Poe house, room, site or museum. But how many could there be, I wondered? As I drove, they kept popping up, so I decided to figure out the mystery.
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic. He is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and macabre. He was among the first to write intuitive, psychological horror; his most famous is “The Raven.” Although Poe didn’t make much money from The Raven, it led to international success and opportunities, enabling him to become the first American writer to live entirely from his earnings.
When I travel, I frequently visit the sites attributed to writers and artists, and Poe was an intriguing study, especially as I kept stumbling upon Poe sites. It seemed they had no end.
1. Edgar and Annabel Lee in Charleston, South Carolina
I learned of my first Edgar Allen Poe site in Charleston on a late-night ghost walk. While there, I heard the story told a few different ways about a possible Poe love story. It was juicy. The guides say Annabel Lee Ravenel, the teenage daughter of one of the city’s wealthiest families, had an “unworthy” lover, forbidden by her father from 1827 – 1828.
It’s said the father went to extreme lengths to keep the lovers apart, and when the girl died from disease, he had her buried in an unmarked grave in the Unitarian Graveyard so her lover wouldn’t know where she was and couldn’t visit. The girl, brokenhearted even in death, is said to haunt the old graveyard still, looking for her lost lover while wearing the unworn wedding dress she’d bought for a planned elopement.
During the same time, Poe, who had lied about his age and used a false name, was in the Army. He was named Edgar Perry and was stationed at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island in Charleston. The last poem he published more than 20 years later is “Annabel Lee.” It reads in part:
And this was the reason that, long ago,
Edgar Allan Poe
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
What a mystery! Sites in Charleston named for Poe include the Poe Library, 1921 Ion Ave., and Poe’s Tavern, both on Sullivan’s Island.
2. The Poe House and Dorm in Richmond, Virginia
As I made my way up the coast, I stopped in Virginia. Before I knew it, I heard about more Edgar Allan Poe sites.
As a child, in 1811, Poe’s mother died in Richmond, where he was adopted and later attended the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. The university has enshrined Poe’s old dorm and called it “The Raven’s Room.”
The room is used by a group called the Raven Society. You can see it through a plexiglass partition. Find it at 3 West Range on the University of Virginia campus.
A few years before he attended the college, however, he was part of a junior honor color guard that escorted famed Revolutionary War General Marquis de Lafayette around the city. They stopped to visit the family living in Richmond’s Old Stone House. That house is now The Poe Museum, which holds the most extensive collection of the author’s original writing and possessions. Find it at 1914 E Main Street, Richmond, VA 23223.
Poe would come back to Richmond repeatedly and live there for several years.
3. Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum in Baltimore, Maryland
Poe not only lived in Baltimore, but it’s also where he died and is buried. As a taphophile who often visits famous graves, this is where I started to get interested in unraveling the many sites of Poe. I began by visiting his former home.
The Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum is where he lived with his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter, Virginia, during much of the 1830s. It’s now a museum and displays exhibits about the writer’s life. The house is a small two-and-a-half-story brick duplex on the end of a series of row houses.
At the Poe house, you enter a small parlor with memorabilia, artifacts and information about Poe. Items include glassware, china, a telescope used by Poe, a traveling desk and other items. Each of the five rooms has period-appropriate artifacts and signage detailing Poe’s life in Baltimore. The most interesting is the upstairs attic.
A tightly winding staircase so narrow you nearly must crawl into the room at the top leads to a room. The ceiling slopes dramatically on either side, like the letter A. There is a rough cot bed, a chair and a chest with a pair of men’s boots next to it. A book, candle, quill and ink well sat on the chest, where he likely penned many stories. A black raven perches in the window.
Fun Fact: In a confusing turn, there is yet another “Edgar Allan Poe House” in Fayetteville, North Carolina. But this house and person have nothing to do with the poet. How’s that for odd?
Later in life, Poe would come back to Baltimore, only to die a tragic and mysterious death, but before he died, he lived in a few other places, and I was about to stumble upon the next one.
Find Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum at No. 3 Amity, Baltimore.
4. Edgar Allan Poe sites in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
By now, as I traveled up the East Coast to visit Philadelphia, I wasn’t surprised to find another of the Edgar Allan Poe sites.
Unable to find work in the late 1830s, Poe moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and lived six years in various places. His only surviving residence is a small house within walking distance of the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. Today, the National Park Service maintains the home as the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site.
Fun Fact: This home the author once rented has been preserved as it was when he lived there. One fun feature the guides point out is the original floorboards are loose and creaky, and historians speculate it may be where Poe got the idea for “The Tell-Tale Heart.” A story about a man who hides the body parts of a victim under his floorboards!
Find it at 532 N. 7th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
5. Poe in Boston
When I was in Boston, I learned, to nobody’s surprise, that Poe was born there and briefly lived there for some time in adulthood. It’s where he published his first book “Tamerlane and Other Poems” under the pseudonym “A Bostonian.”
Poe was born in Boston on Jan. 19, 1809, in a house the city has since demolished, but city leaders renamed a plaza near Boston Common the “Common Edgar Allan Poe Square.” On the square, they’ve put a bronze statue of Poe that looks like he’s rushing down the street, a raven flying next to him.
Fun Fact: Poe disdained Boston residents and called them croaking “Frogpondians” about the Frog Pond in the Boston Common near where his statue now resides.
6. The Edgar Allan Poe Cottage in New York City
In New York, I’m hardly surprised to find other Edgar Allan Poe sites to which there now seems no end. It is here, in the Bronx, where Poe had a small country cottage and found fame after publishing “The Raven” in 1845.
NYC Parks maintains the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage in New York City, where Poe works as an editor and critic.
Fun Fact: The city moved the home from its original location a few blocks north to widen a road.
If that’s not enough Edgar Allan Poe sites, there’s also a building in Greenwich Village. There, you’ll find a plaque dedicated to Poe, who briefly lived there too. This man was the original nomad.
NYU’s Furman Hall replaced the building, but architects made its façade resemble the original 1845 structure. It’s where he would have lived while editing “The Raven” for publication. A room in Furman Hall is also dedicated to Poe.
Find it at 85 W. 3rd Street, NYC.
7 & 8 Poe Grave Site(s)
Shame on you if, by now, you thought Poe had only grave. Of course, he has two. After New York, Poe moved back to Richmond, Virginia, and on Sept 26, 1849, set sail on a trip. He stopped briefly in Baltimore and got off the ship. What happened after he disembarked is a mystery.
There is no record of anyone seeing Poe again until Oct. 3, when people at a tavern, believing him severely drunk, had him taken to a hospital. Poe was delirious and raving mad at the hospital, where he continued nonsensical raving and could not tell anyone what had happened. After four days of madness, he died.
His family buried him in a family plot in the back of the Westminster Burying Grounds, in an unmarked grave. Over the years, the site became derelict, so supporters raised funds to move it to the front of the cemetery. They had Poe exhumed and buried under a large memorial marker at the front of the church.
The square granite monument is six feet on each side and features a bas-relief bust of Poe, with the dates 1809 and 1849. And thus, the mystery of the many Edgar Allan Poe ends. Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
Read stories about other historic sites here.
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