The November 1875 unveiling of the Poe Monument culminated a 10-year effort to memorialize Baltimore's beloved adopted son, Edgar Allan Poe. Designed by architect George A. Frederick, best known for Baltimore's City Hall, the marble tomb quickly became a popular destination and remains a shrine for Poe devotees from across the globe. Sara S. Rice, a British native and beloved teacher at neighboring Western Female High School, spent 10 years raising money through literary benefits and a penny campaign among local school children, and had the honor of unveiling the monument. The dedication ceremonies took place in Westminster Churchyard, with preliminary exercises in the Western Female High School, where the initial movement to perpetuate Poe's memory had begun in October 1865, and Walt Whitman was among the invited guests. Hugh Sisson executed Frederick's design in white veined marble imported from Italy, set on a granite base quarried near Baltimore, though Poe's birth date was mistakenly carved as January 20 instead of January 19. The remains of Virginia, Poe's wife and cousin, who died in New York in 1847, and Maria Clemm, Poe's mother-in-law and aunt, who died in Baltimore in 1871, were moved there in 1885, and their names were added in 1977. Stephane Mallarme's 1875 sonnet for a Poe memorial volume became a literary classic in France, and in 1921 a bronze memorial donated by the Societe des Gens de Letteres de France was attached to the tomb before later being stolen. In October 1912, Poe admirer Orrin C. Painter created a new gated entrance designed by Baltimore architect Otto Simpson, and a wreath-laying tradition on Poe's January 19 birthday dates to the 1920s and the founding of Baltimore's Edgar Allan Poe Society.
