This was the Baltimore home of the renowned author, editor, and literary critic best remembered for his macabre short stories. Poe lived here between 1832 and 1835, a crucial period in his career when he turned from poetry to acclaimed short stories. It also represents an intact example of Baltimore’s quintessential two-and-a-half-story-with-dormer row house form. It is the only house in the Poppleton neighborhood, once occupied by railroad workers, to survive a 1938 slum clearance project. It was saved by the Edgar Allan Poe Society and opened as a museum in 1949. Poe died in Baltimore under mysterious circumstances in 1849; his grave is located in the Burying Ground of Westminster Hall (Presbyterian Church; W. Fayette and N. Green Streets).
The house now stands among the Poe Homes, the first public housing project in Baltimore, created as segregated housing for African Americans, opening in 1940. The project was modeled after those initiated by the Federal Housing Division of the Public Works Administration. The two- and three-story modernistic brick buildings include a distinctive first-story pent, tripartite windows, and panels of patterned brick, arranged around an open court. It is noteworthy as an initial attempt to address the need for decent, affordable housing for the city’s poor Black population. The neighborhood is currently under-going a second wave of redevelopment. Known as Center/West, the contemporary-designed, mixed-use project by Gensler for La Cité Development provides market-rate and affordable housing units and retail space.