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The Bowery Boys: New York City History

#241 Edgar Allan Poe in New York

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Places & Travel, History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.73.9K Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2017

⏱️ 61 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Edgar Allan Poe was a wanderer -- looking for work, for love, for meaning. That's why so many American cities can lay claim to a small aspect of his legacy. Baltimore, Boston, Richmond and Philadelphia all have their own stories to tell about the great writer. In this show, we spotlight the imprint Poe made upon New York City. Poe was in New York both on the year of his birth (as the child of two stage actor) and the year of his death (fleeing his longtime home in Fordham). Throughout out his life he came back -- again and again -- discovering inspiration in the prosperous, growing city of the 1830s and 40s. He lived in Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side. And for a time, he also lived in the area of today's Upper West Side, in a farmhouse where he conjured to vivid life his most successful poem -- "The Raven". The Poe Cottage in the Bronx is the only extant building where Poe (and his young wife Virginia) actually lived, a modest abode that's a rare example of surviving working-class housing from the mid-19th century. Through tragedy, Poe sought solitude in the surrounding mounts and fields of Westchester County. The majestic High Bridge would be of a particular strange comfort. This is a story both of Poe himself and the fragments of buildings and homes left behind with his name attached to them. In many neighborhoods of New York, you can linger with the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe himself. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0

The Bowry Boys Episode 241, Ed Garallon Poe, in New York.

0:05.2

Hey, it's The Bowry Boys.

0:06.8

Hey.

0:07.8

Support for The Bowry Boys is provided by our listeners.

0:11.5

Join us for as little as $1 a month by visiting patreon.com slash Bowry Boys.

0:20.1

Hi there, welcome to The Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.

0:22.7

And this is Tom Myers.

0:24.1

To conclude our Bowry Boys Month of Mystery,

0:28.4

which we began a couple weeks ago with the post-colonial murder mystery,

0:32.8

featuring Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr,

0:35.3

and then continued last week with our annual Ghost Story,

0:39.5

a look at the spirits of Greenwich Village.

0:42.6

Well, for our conclusion to this month of mystery,

0:45.6

we bring you the biography of one of America's greatest writers,

0:50.0

The Master of Horror at Garallon Poe.

0:53.2

Poe, of course, was a trailblazing author who lived his life,

0:57.7

like so many of his characters,

0:59.8

in an extremely constant state of melancholy and longing.

1:04.6

And very notably, several of Poe's most productive and important years in the 1830s and 1840s

1:12.2

were spent right here in New York City.

1:15.1

Now, this isn't a traditional biography because Poe was a wanderer.

1:20.4

And many cities in the United States

...

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