Edgar Allan Poe House (the New York-Bronx house)

New York’s Poe house, the "cottage" where Edgar Allan Poe lived until his death and where Virginia Clemm Poe died, is set to get a make-over. But this is its second major renovation. The house was moved from its original location many years ago and in 1975 went through a restoration. Because the house at one time was above a subway line, the house has suffered from vibrations that most old homes cannot withstand.

Because Virginia Poe died in this house, the house holds a special claim over Poe fans (especially fans of “Anabelle Lee” and “The Bells”). Poe, perhaps because of his dark short stories and sometimes-grim poetry, holds a beloved place in the hearts of literary tourists. Poe tourism may even be on the rise as new Poe fans are born every day, as teenagers often find Poe's work some of the few assigned readings to which they can relate. E.L. Doctorow put in a NYTimes piece, “All that morbidity is read and lapped up by children.”

Edgar Allan Poe lived in many houses. In 2001, the city of New York lost one Poe house in Greenwich Village to an expansion of the NYU law school. In a compromise with preservationists, NYU developers agreed to keep/rebuild the facade of the house and offer space within the larger building that houses part of the law school. Sadly, they “rebuilt” the building as a false front, using new bricks and salvaging only a 2x8 panel of original bricks that they display inside. A Times reporter likened the façade to the “Cask of Amontillado.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as though they’ve bricked up the spirit of Poe inside the new law building.

All of this Poe-house musing is in service of a question, a question about lost houses, as surely despite the façade the Greenwich Village, that house is lost. How does restoration affect the literary spirit of an author’s house? Is it better to lose the house entirely? Is a restored house a lost house? These questions are not new ones, John Ruskin ruminated on the “restoration” of old buildings in Europe almost 160 years ago. It seems, he preferred ruins to restorations:

From John Ruskin’s The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) Dutton: New York, 1963.

“There was yet in the old some life, some mysterious suggestion of what had been, and of what had been lost; some sweetness in the gentle lines which rain and sun had wrought . . .

Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a Lie from beginning to end. You may make a model of a building as you may of a corpse, and your model will have the shell of the old walls within it as your cast might have the skeleton…

But, it is said, there may come a necessity for restoration! Granted. Look the necessity full in the face, and understand it on its own terms. It is a necessity for destruction. Accept it as such, pull the building down, throw its stones into neglected corners, make ballast of them, or mortar, if you will; but do it honestly, and do not set up a Lie in their place” (199-200).

What will happen in the little Poe cottage in the Bronx?