Edgar Allan Poe's Cottage

This weekend I dropped in to see Edgar Allan Poe at his cottage in the Bronx. He wasn't in, but a gregarious caretaker gave me a tour of the humble wooden structure incongruously hedged in by 20th century brick and mortar.

In the mid-1840s Poe's wife (and cousin) Virginia Clemm had come down with tuberculosis, or "consumption" as it was more romantically known in those days, and it was hoped that abandoning the people-clogged arteries of lower Manhattan in favor of the bucolic open space of the rolling Bronx hills would have a restorative effect on her health. Poe rented the cottage on John Valentine's farmland for $100 a year. Having recently sold "The Raven" to The American Review for nine dollars, this was barely affordable to the impoverished writer. Heated entirely by fireplace, the cottage was constructed with low ceilings to conserve as much warmth as possible. As Poe was unable to afford better fittings, Virginia slept on a mattress stuffed with straw and for a blanket had to make due with Poe's old West Point army jacket. It was here that Poe wrote "Annabel Lee" and "The Bells."

Virginia unfortunately succumbed to her illness in 1847. The lonely, griefstricken Poe often walked over to the nearby St John's College (now Fordham University) to drink and play cards with the Jesuit priests, and to immerse himself in their library. He appreciated that the priests refrained from discussing religion with him. His poem "The Bells" was inspired by the college's tolling church bell.

Soon after, Poe made a trip to Baltimore from which he never returned.

The New York Shakespeare Society bought and preserved the cottage while over the course of the following century the Bronx as we know it rose up in all directions. In 2010, the cottage closed temporarily for restoration. While repairing the western wall, workers discovered hidden within it, among other things, a two-tined fork and a baby's shoe.


The cottage at the north end of "Poe Park."










It was in this chair that Poe sat rocking when something came a'knocking, knocking at his chamber door.


The kitchen.


Virginia Eliza Clemm Poe died of tuberculosis in this bed in 1847 at the age of 24.


The upstairs master bedroom. Poe would've slept here before the Bronx Historical Society turned it into an auditorium.


"Poe Walking on the High Bridge" by Bernard Jacob Rosenmeyer is a depiction of Poe crossing the High Bridge, a segment of the Old Croton Aqueduct spanning the Harlem River from the Bronx into Manhattan. After his wife's death, Poe was given to long moody walks and the isolated High Bridge became one of his favored destinations.

Dispatches from the Spy Camera