National Park Getaway: Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site, Philadelphia

By Joanne Schillizzi, park ranger, Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site.

The name Edgar Allan Poe calls up a heart beating under the floorboards and the ominous croak of "The Raven." Poe lived in many cities, but it was in Philadelphia that most of his finest work was published. A short walk from the Liberty Bell stands a small house where he lived for a brief time, now Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site. Visitors can explore its unfurnished, unrestored rooms on their own or with a ranger.

The Poe house in Philadelphia. NPS.

Light and dark

The house stirs the imagination. On sunny days its rooms fill with light — healing for Poe's young wife, Virginia, who had tuberculosis. On grey winter days they turn eerily dark, like the gothic tales he published in his Philadelphia years, "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Pit and the Pendulum" among them.

A ranger introduces students to Poe's home. NPS.

The empty rooms recall the money troubles and personal hardship that dogged Poe, and the exhibits trace the sadness and tragedy that followed him through life. The highlight is the cellar, which closely resembles the setting of the site's signature story, "The Black Cat." Did Poe trip over his own cat, Catterina, down here and find the idea? Readers of the story will know where the body was hidden.

A ranger recites "The Black Cat" in the cellar. NPS.

More than horror

Poe is best known for tales of terror and haunting poems, but in Philadelphia he also invented the modern detective story with "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" — and if imitation is the sincerest flattery, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes is a fine tribute to Poe's detective, C. Auguste Dupin. He was also a busy literary critic and essayist, writing nearly a thousand pieces. His essay "The Philosophy of Furniture" inspired rangers to create a cosy, "not ostentatious" Reading Room — though whether that was truly Poe's idea of good taste or another of his hoaxes, like his pioneering science-fiction story "The Balloon-Hoax," no one can say. As one of his contemporaries put it, everybody wanted to know him, but very few got to know him well.

The Reading Room, furnished as Poe's "The Philosophy of Furniture" describes, where visitors can read or listen to his work or write their own. NPS.

Visiting

A short film tells the story of Poe's life and times. Children can explore interactive exhibits and a 19th-century travel trunk packed with the kinds of things Poe and his wife travelled with, and earn a Junior Ranger badge. Outside are a statue commemorating "The Raven" and a 19th-century-style cottage garden of plants named in his works. And don't be too alarmed if you glimpse a black cat in the cellar window.

Sources

• Joanne Schillizzi, "National Park Getaway: Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site," National Park Service. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/getaway-edal.htm
• Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site: https://www.nps.gov/edal/index.htm
• Corrected: the page calls two stories "The Pit and Pendulum" and "The Murders of the Rue Morgue"; their titles are "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." Poe's detective is C. Auguste (not "Augustus") Dupin.