Location | 2640 Grand Concourse, Fordham, Bronx, NY, |
---|---|
Coordinates | 40°51′55″N73°53′40″W / 40.86528°N 73.89444°W |
Type | Historic house museum |
Public transit access |
|
Website | |
Poe Cottage | |
Area | 3 acres (1.2 ha) |
Built | 1812 |
Architect | John Wheeler |
NRHP reference No. | 80002588 [1] |
NYCL No. | 0110 |
Significant dates | |
Added to NRHP | August 19, 1980 |
Designated NYCL | February 15, 1966 |
The Edgar Allan Poe Cottage (or Poe Cottage) is the former home of American writer Edgar Allan Poe. It is located on Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse in the Fordham neighborhood of the Bronx, New York, [2] a short distance from its original location, and is now in the northern part of Poe Park.
The cottage is a part of the Historic House Trust, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, [3] has been administered by the Bronx County Historical Society since 1975, [4] and is believed to have been built in 1797. [2] [5]
The Poe family—which included Edgar, his wife Virginia Clemm, and her mother Maria—moved in around May 1846 [6] after living for a short time in Turtle Bay, Manhattan. [7] At the time Fordham was not yet a part of the Bronx and the rural community had only recently been connected to the city by rail. [6] The cottage, which was then on Kingsbridge Road to the east of its intersection with Valentine Avenue, was small and simple: it had on its first floor a sitting room and kitchen and its unheated second floor had a bedroom and Poe's study. On the front porch the family kept caged songbirds. [7] The home sat on 2 acres (8,100 m2) of land and Poe paid either $5 rent per month [2] or $100 per year. [8] Its owner, John Valentine, had bought it from a man named Richard Corsa on March 28, 1846, [9] for $1000. [10]
The family seemed to enjoy the home, despite its small size and minimal furnishings. "The cottage is very humble", a visitor said, "you wouldn't have thought decent people could have lived in it; but there was an air of refinement about everything." [11] A friend of Poe's years later wrote: "The cottage had an air of taste and gentility... So neat, so poor, so unfurnished, and yet so charming a dwelling I never saw." [12] In a letter to a friend, Poe himself wrote: "The place is a beautiful one." [10] Maria wrote years later: "It was the sweetest little cottage imaginable. Oh, how supremely happy we were in our dear cottage home!" [13] Poe's final short story, "Landor's Cottage", was likely inspired by the home. [9]
In this home, Poe wrote his poems "Annabel Lee" and "Ulalume" while the family cat sat on his shoulder. [14] During his time here, he also published his series on "The Literati of New York City", controversial gossip-like discussions of literary figures and their work, including Nathaniel Parker Willis, Charles Frederick Briggs, Thomas Dunn English, Margaret Fuller, and Lewis Gaylord Clark. As their publisher Louis Antoine Godey announced in his Lady's Book , they would soon "raise some commotion in the literary emporium." [15]
The Poe family befriended their neighbors, including the family of John Valentine, and Poe even served as a sponsor for baptism for one of the local boys who was named "Edgar Albert". [16] Poe also became friendly with the faculty at what was then St. John's College, now Fordham University. [11] He found the Jesuit faculty to be "highly cultivated gentleman and scholars [who] smoked, drank, and played cards like gentleman, and never said a word about religion." [17] The college's church bells inspired his poem "The Bells". [18]
During the Poe family's time in the cottage, Virginia struggled with tuberculosis. Family friend Mary Gove Nicholls wrote: "One felt that she was almost a disrobed spirit, and when she coughed it was made certain that she was rapidly passing away." [19] Virginia died in the cottage's first floor bedroom on January 30, 1847. She was buried in the vault of the Valentine family on February 2. [20] Poe died a couple of years later on October 7, 1849, while in Baltimore. [21] At Fordham, Maria did not hear of his death until October 9, after he was already buried. Shortly thereafter, she moved out of the cottage to live with a family in Brooklyn for a time. [22]
The cottage's immediate use following the Poe family is uncertain; however, it was reported to be occupied by an 'old southern lady'. [8] In 1874, an article by M. J. Lamb published in Appleton's Journal described a pilgrimage to the site and noted the cottage was "dreadfully out of repair". [23] The cottage was sold at auction in 1889 for $775 to William Fearing Gill in the first step of preservation [24] after the Parks Department found it to be too expensive a proposition with rent approximately four times what Poe paid. [8] Gill would later become Poe's first American biographer. [25]
In 1895, the New York Shakespeare Society purchased the Cottage for use as a headquarters with the promise that it would be maintained in the condition in which Poe used it. [26] However, concerns about any move of the cottage sprung up almost immediately. [27] [28] An article titled "Shall We Save the Poe Cottage at Fordham" was published in The Review of Reviews in 1896, urging the New York State Legislature to act on preserving the home with endorsements from Theodore Roosevelt, Hamlin Garland, William Dean Howells, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Cabot Lodge, Horace Scudder and others. [29]
In 1905, it was announced that $100,000 had been authorized by the state legislature for the restoration of the cottage and creation of a park in which to house the cottage after the owners were reported to be denying visitors access to the cottage. [2] The restoration and park creation were not without complaint, and many felt the money would be better spent on other ventures and further that the cottage's authenticity would be lost if it were to be moved. The decision to move was finally made in 1910 and on November 13, 1913, Poe Cottage in Poe Park was dedicated at the corner of Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse. [8] In 1922, further reconstruction was undertaken by the New York Historical Society to restore the cottage to its original condition. [30]
In 1962, Poe's Cottage was designated a Bronx landmark, [31] and in 1966 it was recognized by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission as an official city landmark. [32] In 1974 vandals struck, as in the past, leading to further criticism of the Cottage's management and preservation efforts. [33]
Vandalism continued to occur over the next few years, [34] though it tapered off by the end of the following decade, becoming less of a risk [35] due in part to the increased use of live-in caretakers. In the late 1990s, the cottage was under the care of a graduate student in philology who lived in the basement. [36]
In 2007, the proposed Visitors Center for the Cottage and Bronx Historical Society in Poe Park was honored by the New York City Art Commission's 2007 Design Awards. [37] The visitor center, designed by Toshiko Mori, opened in 2008 [38] [39] and was the first NYC Parks project completed under mayor Michael Bloomberg's Design and Construction Excellence Initiative. [40]
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales involving mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as one of the central figures of Romanticism and Gothic fiction in the United States, and of early American literature. Poe was one of the country's first successful practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered to be the inventor of the detective fiction genre. In addition, he is credited with contributing significantly to the emergence of science fiction. He is the first well-known American writer to earn a living by writing alone, which resulted in a financially difficult life and career.
Eliza Poe was an English-American actress and the mother of the American author Edgar Allan Poe.
Frances Sargent Osgood was an American poet and one of the most popular women writers during her time. Nicknamed "Fanny", she was also famous for her exchange of romantic poems with Edgar Allan Poe.
Fordham Manor is a neighborhood located in the western Bronx, New York City. Fordham is roughly bordered by East 196th Street to the north, the Harlem River to the west, Fordham Road to the south, and Southern Boulevard to the east. The neighborhood's primary thoroughfares are Fordham Road and Grand Concourse.
"Al Aaraaf" is an early poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1829. It tells of the afterlife in a place called Al Aaraaf, inspired by A'raf as described in the Quran. At 422 lines, it is Poe's longest poem.
"The Bells" is a heavily onomatopoeic poem by Edgar Allan Poe which was not published until after his death in 1849. It is perhaps best known for the diacopic use of the word "bells". The poem has four parts to it; each part becomes darker and darker as the poem progresses from "the jingling and the tinkling" of the bells in part 1 to the "moaning and the groaning" of the bells in part 4.
Eureka (1848) is a lengthy non-fiction work by the American author Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) which he subtitled "A Prose Poem", though it has also been subtitled "An Essay on the Material and Spiritual Universe". Adapted from a lecture he had presented, Eureka describes Poe's intuitive conception of the nature of the universe, with no antecedent scientific work done to reach his conclusions. He also discusses man's relationship with God, whom he compares to an author. Eureka is dedicated to the German naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859).
The Grand Concourse is a 5.2-mile-long (8.4 km) thoroughfare in the borough of the Bronx in New York City. Grand Concourse runs through several neighborhoods, including Bedford Park, Concourse, Highbridge, Fordham, Mott Haven, Norwood and Tremont. For most of its length, the Concourse is 180 feet (55 m) wide, though portions of the Concourse are narrower.
The Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site is a preserved home once rented by American author Edgar Allan Poe, located at 532 N. 7th Street, in the Spring Garden neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Though Poe lived in many houses over several years in Philadelphia, it is the only one which still survives. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962.
The Poe Museum or the Edgar Allan Poe Museum, is a museum located in the Shockoe Bottom neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia, United States, dedicated to American writer Edgar Allan Poe. Though Poe never lived in the building, it serves to commemorate his time living in Richmond. The museum holds one of the world's largest collections of original manuscripts, letters, first editions, memorabilia and personal belongings. The museum also provides an overview of early 19th century Richmond, where Poe lived and worked. The museum features the life and career of Poe by documenting his accomplishments with pictures, relics, and verse, and focusing on his many years in Richmond.
Virginia Eliza Poe was the wife of the American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The couple were first cousins and publicly married when Virginia Clemm was 13 and Poe was 27. Biographers disagree as to the nature of the couple's relationship. Though their marriage was loving, some biographers suggest they viewed one another more like a brother and sister. In January 1842, she contracted tuberculosis, growing worse for five years until she died of the disease at the age of 24 in the family's cottage, at that time outside New York City.
Fordham Plaza, originally known as Fordham Square, is a major commercial and transportation hub in the Fordham and Belmont sections of the Bronx in New York City, New York, United States. It is located on the south side of Fordham Road at Third and Webster Avenues, at the eastern end of the commercial strip along Fordham Road that runs past Grand Concourse and Jerome Avenue to about Grand Avenue, and to the west of the Bronx's Little Italy district on Arthur Avenue in Belmont.
The Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, located at 203 North Amity St. in Baltimore, Maryland, is the former home of American writer Edgar Allan Poe in the 1830s. The small unassuming structure, which was opened as a writer's house museum in 1949, is a typical row home. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.
The death of Edgar Allan Poe on October 7, 1849, has remained mysterious in regard to both the cause of death and the circumstances leading to it. American author Edgar Allan Poe was found delirious and disheveled at a tavern in Baltimore, Maryland, on October 3. He sought the help of magazine editor Joseph E. Snodgrass and was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he was treated for his apparent intoxication. Poe had no visitors in the hospital and gave no account of how he came to be in his condition before dying on October 7 at age 40.
Tamerlane and Other Poems is the first published work by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. The short collection of poems was first published in 1827. Today, it is believed only 12 copies of the collection still exist.
Elizabeth Fries Ellet was an American writer, historian and poet. She was the first writer to record the lives of women who contributed to the American Revolutionary War.
The works of American author Edgar Allan Poe include many poems, short stories, and one novel. His fiction spans multiple genres, including horror fiction, adventure, science fiction, and detective fiction, a genre he is credited with inventing. These works are generally considered part of the Dark romanticism movement, a literary reaction to Transcendentalism. Poe's writing reflects his literary theories: he disagreed with didacticism and allegory. Meaning in literature, he said in his criticism, should be an undercurrent just beneath the surface; works whose meanings are too obvious cease to be art. Poe pursued originality in his works, and disliked proverbs. He often included elements of popular pseudosciences such as phrenology and physiognomy. His most recurring themes deal with questions of death, including its physical signs, the effects of decomposition, concerns of premature burial, the reanimation of the dead, and mourning. Though known as a masterly practitioner of Gothic fiction, Poe did not invent the genre; he was following a long-standing popular tradition.
The Bronx Library Center is a branch of the New York Public Library in the Fordham section of the Bronx in New York City. The library is located at 310 East Kingsbridge Road between Fordham Road and East 192nd Street, two blocks east of the Grand Concourse. It is the central library for the Bronx, and the largest library in the borough.
The Bronx County Historical Society is a private non-profit organization that collects and disseminates historical material and information about the New York City borough of the Bronx, as well as southern Westchester County, New York.
Edward Doucet was an American Jesuit academic who was the seventh President of Fordham University.
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