Edgar Allan Poe House
“The little house in the lowly street with the lovely name.” This was how Edgar Allan Poe described 203 Amity Street, where he lived from 1832 to 1835 with his grandmother, aunt, and cousin Virginia, whom he married in 1836.
While living here, the famous American writer first gained public recoginition. In 1833, Poe won a literacy contest sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor, one of the seventy magazines that burst upon, the local scene in the early 19th century. The three judges, who included J. H. B. Latrobe, unanimously awarded the $50 prize to Poe for “MS in a Bottle.” “Distinguished by a vigorous and poetical imagination,” declared the judges, “a rich style, a fertile invention and varied and curious learning.”
Poe became famous for his lyric poetry, discerning criticism, detective stories and hair raising “tales of the grotesque and ababesque,” but his personal life was clouded by difficulties with alcohol, intermittent poverty and tragedy. Poe died in Baltimore under mysterious circumstances on October 7, 1849, having been found four days earlier in an unconscious state on Lombard Street. He is buried in Western Burying Grounds at Westminster Church.
Marker is on Amity Street 0.1 miles north of Fayatte Street, on the right when traveling north.
Courtesy hmdb.org
