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Poe & Boston: 2009

Even in an article about why Boston should pay more attention to Poe, his middle name is mispelled!

Poe, January 28, 2007 He was our guy first, but Edgar Allen Poe dissed Boston and Boston returned the love. Now as his birthday is celebrated elsewhere and plans are made for his 2009 bicentennial, old grudges are back to haunt.

-The Boston Globe                                                            

The location of Edgar Allan Poe Square in Boston on the 1928 map. Redesign of area streets eliminated the original intersection of Broadway, Fayette, and Carver Streets that made up the square.

Not only was this plaque (left) erected at the shockingly recent date of January 19, 1989, but it is also inadequately celebratory and hanging in the wrong place.

Note the comment below from a January 28, 2007 news story about the street (actually just an alley) supposedly named after Poe in 1989.

Part of the chasm between Poe and Boston is physical—the house where most scholars think he was born no longer stands; the plaque commemorating his birth on Carver Street, outside Green's Luggage Shop at the fringe of the Theater District, suggests his birthplace is now an alley full of trucks servicing the state Transportation Building. (On Poe's birthday in 1989, that section of Carver Street was renamed Poe Way, but it appears even this gesture was ephemeral. The Carver Street signage remains today, and we could find no sign of Poe Way.)

- The Boston Globe                                  

Edgar Allan Poe never lived in one city for long, and ever since he died and was buried in Baltimore in 1849, the city has claimed him as its own.

Cities Duel over Poe's Remains (September 7, 2008)
The one city that probably will never claim Poe is Boston. Though he was born there, Poe wrote disdainfully of the city's literary elite, and his birthplace does not appear among the 1,000-plus attractions on the city's tourism Web site.

- The New York Times                               

Be sure to check out the events to celebrate this bicentennial.

"The Raven Returns" will be on display in the lobby of O'Neill Library until January 26, 2009. Follow the links on the top of this page to enjoy some highlights of the exhibit.

Further information: Paul Lewis or Katherine Kim.