Edgar Allan Poe’s Years at the Brennan Farmhouse

Edgar Allan Poe spent summering on NYC’s upper west side in the 1840’s. In what was primarily farmland at the time, Poe boarded at The Brennan Farmhouse, a home on what would later become 84th Street. He rented rooms with his wife Virginia, and her mother, in hopes that the country air would speed his wife’s recovery from tuberculosis. The Poe’s spent two summers at this location, where the writer reportedly completed his famous poem “The Raven.”

This literary giant is one of several remembered today on the upper west side. Poe’s legacy lives on in the stretch of 84th Street, which is named Edgar Allan Poe Street, and in other neighborhoods where he once lived. The site of another of his homes in the Bronx, NY, is known as Poe Cottage and Poe Park. He is also associated with Baltimore, Maryland, where he died at 40. The Baltimore Ravens have celebrated Poe’s association with their hometown in choosing their team name and mascots Poe, Edgar, and Allan! https://www.baltimoreravens.com/team/history/naming-the-team

As for Poe’s Upper West Side home, the Brennan Farmhouse, its condition deteriorated rapidly in the decades following. Before being demolished in 1888, the mantelpiece was rescued from the room where Poe composed ‘The Raven!’ Today it is housed along with Columbia University’s Poe collection.  And there are plaques on both the east and west sides of Broadway and 84^th Street that commemorate the location of The Brennan Farmhouse. (Photo from Wikipedia Common)