Edgar Allan Poe Monument (Baltimore, MD)
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Location
W Mount Royal Avenue & Maryland Avenue (Street View)
GPS: 39° 18′ 20.33″ N 76° 37′ 2.39″ W
History
The Poe monument was dedicated on October 20, 1921 and is by artist Moses J. Ezekiel. It’s original location was in Wyman Park at the corner of 29th Street. Interestingly, the first model for this monument was destroyed in a custom house fire, the second was destroyed in an earthquake and the third was delayed many years during WWI from being shipped across the Atlantic. The original base too, now lost, also has a strange history. It contained two misspellings in its dedication quote, one of which was eventually corrected by a vigilante-fan using a chisel in 1930 who was arrested but not charged. Poe’s monument was moved from Wyman Park to its current location in the Law Center Plaza in 1983 outside the University of Baltimore on Mount Royal Ave.
Notes
Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, MA in 1809 to actor and actress David Poe, Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe. Poe’s father abandoned the family in 1810, and a year later his mother died. He was taken in as a foster child by John Allan, a prominent businessman in Richmond, VA. Though he was only an occasional resident of the City of Baltimore, Poe was found in the street quite unwell and wearing someone else’s clothes on October 3, 1849 and died several days later. The precise cause and circumstances surrounding his death remain a mystery, though several prominent theoretical explanations have been put forward. He was laid to rest at Westminster Hall and Burying Ground in Baltimore, MD on Fayette Street. The controversy over his demise is perhaps not surprising since much of his work dealt with the vicissitudes of death. Another curiosity connected to Poe’s final moments is a ritual undertaken annually by a mysterious figure known as the “Poe Toaster” who every year on January 19 makes a toast of cognac and leaves three roses at the site of Poe’s grave monument. According to Wikipedia, “Members of the Edgar Allan Poe Society in Baltimore have helped in protecting this tradition for decades.” Though not originally from Baltimore, Poe has become something of a patron saint of the city. The NFL football team, the Baltimore Ravens are named after his famous poem, “The Raven,” and an anthropomorphized raven character named “Poe” is the team’s official mascot.
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