Not far from the Babe Ruth House is the house where Edgar Allan Poe lived when he was a young writer in Baltimore. After he washed out of West Point, Poe returned to Baltimore to stay with his Aunt, who had recently moved to the Pigtown area (wasn't called that then either, but I still love saying it).  That same year, the B&O train station was built just a few blocks away.

The house still stands in the Southwestern part of Baltimore.  At the time it was built - around 1830 - it was in the country.  The city grew in around it and over the years it fell into disrepair.  Folks tried to tear it down but it was eventually spared by the Edgar Allan Poe Society and the City. There's been a lot of restoration work done and it still needs quite a bit. This is what it looks like now:
 

The curator would like you to know that there are no bodies buried in the basement or walls that they know of.  I guess that question's been asked more than a few times.

It was while Poe was living here that he decided to stop writing poetry and instead conjured some short stories, one of the first American authors to attempt to write in this genre.  He submitted a short story called MS Found in a Bottle (one of my favorites) to a Baltimore newspaper and won $50.  I guess it was encouragement enough because he eventually refined his style enough to be considered the definer of detective fiction.  The Telltale Heart, Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Purloined Letter are all fine examples of his "tales of ratiocination..." long before Arthur Conan Doyle came along and inspired CSI. 

One year, shortly after I moved here, I went to the Poe house on Halloween day to hear the curator of the museum dress up like Poe (a remarkable likeness) and do dramatic readings of The Raven and The Black Cat, my personal favorite.  It was another instance of "if I half close my eyes and don't look at the people around me, I could almost convince myself I'd gone back in time."

 
The museum has a series of pieces that illustrate the poem, The Raven.

 
This is the original medallion from his grave marker.  It was replaced with a bronze one when the weather caused his face on this one to resemble Voldemort more than Poe.

If the Babe Ruth House is tiny, this would be minuscule.  I honestly don't know how five people lived in it.  This is The Dormouse climbing up the stairway to the attic room.   She fills up the entire staircase.  She's seven.

 

This is me looking down from the top of those stairs:

I know, my socks are awesome.

I like to imagine him writing at a desk in this attic room while looking out the window over the countryside and thinking about all the weird things he could throw into his next story.  The truth is, you have to go through what was probably his Aunt's room to get to it, so it probably wasn't a room he occupied that much in Victorian America.  Still it's a nice image.



This bust of Poe stands in the entry room of the house.  I loved the shadow the flash threw from this angle.  It was only after I got home and was looking through the photos that my family reminded me that the curator had told us that we could take photos wherever in the house we wanted, just not in this room. I, then completely forgot he'd said this and tromped back into the very room where the curator was standing and took all kinds of photos.  I may be an ass, but he didn't say anything.  I guess it's more of a guideline.