Edgar Allan Poe House

Edgar Allan Poe lived at 203 Amity Street from 1832 to 1835 with his grandmother, aunt, and cousin Virginia, whom he married in 1836. While living there, he first gained public recognition. In 1833, he won a literary contest sponsored by the Baltimore Saturday Visitor, one of the seventy magazines that burst upon the local scene in the early 19th century. Three judges, including J. H. B. Latrobe, unanimously awarded Poe the $50 prize for “MS in a Bottle,” praising its vigorous and poetical imagination, rich style, fertile invention, and varied and curious learning. Poe later became famous for his lyric poetry, discerning criticism, detective stories, and hair raising tales of the grotesque and arabesque, but his personal life was troubled by alcohol, intermittent poverty, and tragedy. He died in Baltimore under mysterious circumstances on October 7, 1849, after being found unconscious four days earlier on Lombard Street, and he is buried in Western Burying Grounds at Westminster Church.

Baltimore, Maryland · United States