Philadelphia: Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site

Edgar Allan Poe lived in a house in Philadelphia for six years. He wrote some of his most famous work while living there, including my favorite Poe piece, “The Tell-Tale Heart,” as well as “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Black Cat,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” and “The Cask of Amontillado” among others. With him in Philadelphia lived With him lived his wife Virginia, his mother-in-law Maria Clemm (whom he called Muddy), and their cat, a tortoise-shell tabby named Catterina. It was here that he experienced some literary acclaim, though it was before “The Raven,” and the addiction and poverty to which he later succumbed weren’t yet at their peak in Philadelphia.

We visited the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site and immediately loved the gutted, empty feel of the house. There was no furniture, no wallpaper, nothing to indicate the literary giant had once resided here except a raven erected out front, long after he was gone. The place had a creepy feel even in broad daylight, with the boards creaking and the footsteps echoing in the vacant rooms. We particularly enjoyed the cellar, where spiderwebs abounded and dirt caked the floor. 

There were two possible signs of Poe. In one room, the word DEATH was scrawled into a wall. The ranger told us they weren’t sure if Poe had done it, or if squatters had done it long after Poe left. Also, green wallpaper had been recovered; the Park Service was pretty sure had been on the walls when Poe lived there.

You could almost feel the great author’s presence in the empty rooms, better by far than if they had been filled with replicas and fakes.