History
The brick home, then numbered 3 Amity St., and now numbered 203 Amity Street, is assumed to have been built in 1830 and rented by Poe's aunt Maria Clemm in 1832. Clemm was joined in the home with her ailing mother, Elizabeth Cairnes Poe, and her daughter Virginia Clemm. Edgar Allan Poe moved in with the family in 1833 around the age of 23, after leaving West Point. Virginia was 10 years old at the time; Poe would marry her three years later, though their only public ceremony was in 1836.
The house was rented using pension money that Elizabeth collected thanks to her husband, David Poe Sr., who was a veteran of the American Revolutionary War. The home is small and Poe's room on the top floor has a ceiling with a sharp pitch which is six feet high at its tallest point.
In the 1930s, homes in the area, including Poe's, were set for demolition to make room for the "Poe Homes" public housing project. The house was spared and control was given to the Edgar Allan Poe Society, which opened the home in 1949. The Poe Society still oversees the building with assistance from Baltimore's Commission for Historic and Architectural Preservation (CHAP). At some point during renovations, they lifted the floorboards and found skeletal remains, reminiscent of Poe's story "The Tell-Tale Heart." They turned out to be animal bones discarded into what is known as a "trash pit" beneath the home.
Read more about this topic: Edgar Allan Poe House And Museum
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