History of the Edgar Allen Poe Cottage in the Bronx

House Edgar Allan Poe Spent his Last Couple Years

August 16, 2017 / Bronx Neighborhoods - Fordham / Bronx Things to do / Bronx History / Bronx Buzz NYC.

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The Poe Cottage was erected in 1812. The small clapboard house is located in Poe Park where the Grand Concourse intersects with Kingsbridge Road in the Fordham neighborhood of the Bronx. The NY Parks Department, which in collaboration with the Bronx County Historical Society, runs the registered historic site - notes that it was a simple farmhouse built for laborers.

Edgar Allan Poe resided here during the last three years of his life. According to the NY Parks Department, the house was moved to its current location from where it had originally stood on Kingsbridge Road [about 450 feet south - near Valentine Avenue] when Poe lived in it.

Poe died in 1849 of causes unconfirmed as according to Wikipedia, his death certificate has been lost. There's a plaque in Boston denoting approximately where he was born, and a monument in Baltimore where he died and was buried. There's also an Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia - an area around which the author spent the majority of the formative years of his short life.

One of Poe's most famous works was The Raven, a poem published in 1845, less than a year before Poe moved into Poe Cottage. The Raven depicts a man struggling with a lost love, where Poe flexes his literary skills with cultural references and cadenced structure.

Another of Poe's most famous works, The Cask of Amontillado, was published in late 1846, after Poe had moved into the Bronx house. And The Bells, Poe's last poem, was written in 1849, the year of Poe's death. It is believed that the sound of the St. Johns College [Fordham University] Church bells could be heard at Poe Cottage after the church was built in 1845, and that the church bells were, in part, some of the inspiration for the poem. The Bronx County Historical Society website notes these two seminal works were penned in the bucolic setting of the Fordham neighborhood in the mid 19th century in the Bronx.

According to the Museum Register, it took a while for the City to take control of the place as an historical site. In 1902 it opened Poe Park and in 1913 it moved the Poe House to its current site. This year the weekend of October 14th and 15th, you can visit the Poe Cottage free as it is a participant in Open House New York, which is an historic site weekend.

Click here to read the rest of our story about Poe Cottage Museum in the Bronx.