The Early Days of the Poe House in Philadelphia

I’ve spent the last two days of my week-long break at the Independence National Historical Park (INHP) Library and Archives looking into the early history of the Edgar Allan Poe House here in Philadelphia.

Although I’m trying to start at the beginning of the history of this site, it is hard to do. The house was purchased by a rare books and manuscripts collector, Richard Gimbel in 1933 and converted into a house museum. The image above is of the house sometime before Gimbel converted it into a house museum; this photo comes from the Library Company of Philadelphia's collection. It doesn't look much like a literary landmark yet.

In 1933 house museums, despite the Great Depression, were all the rage. Lawrence Vail Coleman, in his book Historic House Museums, wrote that there were twenty house museums open in the U.S. in 1895 and that this number grew to “nearly a hundred in 1910 and to more than four hundred now [roughly 1933].”* The Poe House was one of these new house museums devoted to celebrating famous Americans.

It appears as though Gimbel, the grandson of the founder of Gimbels department stores, saw the house as a traditional house museum. He and his curator Anthony Frayne filled the house with carefully chosen period furniture, but Gimbel also used the house as a display place for his growing collection of Poeana (which is now part of the Free Library of Philadelphia's Rare Books Collection). The museum operated as a small private enterprise, run almost entirely by Mr. Frayne and his wife Barbara until Gimbel’s death in 1971.

In 1971 the house was left to the City of Philadelphia, which deemed the Philadelphia Free Library (a branch of the city) should operate it. The photo above is a HABS photo of the inside of the house in 1976 while it was being administered by the Free Library.

Mr. Frayne died in 1973, but Mrs. Frayne lived well into the National Park Service's acquisition of the property in 1978 and its reopening after restoration and remodeling in 1981. She successfully petitioned the Park Service to let her stay on as the house's "security" after hours. She lived in the adjoining house, led tours and raised a family in the "Poe Complex" for at least 45 years.

I haven't yet been able to track down Barbara Frayne's obituary, or the records from the Gimbel Foundation relating to the 38 years that they kept the house open to tourists. My hope is that these records may be with the Free Library.

Many, many thanks to the INHP's incredibly able Archivist and Library Manager Karen Stevens who made this first foray into research on the house easy and absolutely enjoyable!

* Coleman, Laurence Vail. Historic House Museums. Washington, D.C.: The American Association of Museums, 1933, 18.

Authors and Animals

If Petrarch can have a stuffed cat, then why not a stuffed raven for Charles Dickens?

The truth is, I have no idea if Petrarch stuffed his own cat (or rather, I hope paid a profesisonal to do so), or if some zealous fan fed and cared for the cat after the poet’s death and then stuffed him for the sake of future fans.

Twice this week I have encountered Charles Dickens in places where I didn’t expect to find him, once at the Eastern State Penitentiary. Dickens wrote a chapter in his American Notes about Philadelphia and the prison he toured when it was new, which was featured in the outstanding audio tour they have there. And I ran across him again today at the Philadelphia Free Public Library when I was looking for their collection of Edgar Allan Poe materials. I expected the giant stuffed raven at the end of one hallway to be Poe’s, but it wasn’t.

Dickens supposedly, while writing Barnaby Rudge, which featured a raven as a minor character, sought out a raven to do the character justice and ended up adopting one he named Grip after the character. Scholars have argued that Dickens’ portrayal of Grip was what inspired Edgar Allan Poe to write “The Raven.”

The rare book department of Philadelphia Free Public Library [PFPL], Central Branch not only has an astounding collection of Poe materials (given to them through the bequest of Richard Gimbel—a famous Poe collector), but a substantial Charles Dickens collection as well. Highlights of the Dickens collection include one of his desks (not the one that recently sold for more than $850,000) and a chair, as well as his dear stuffed pet.

Apparently, visitors to the rare book room of the PFPL there to see Poe materials are rare; the archivist I talked to today said they only see about one each month.

But with 200^th anniversary of Poe’s birth, perhaps more fans will stumble upon the raven that may have inspired “The Raven.”

"Sorrow floats", as John Irving might say about one of his own stuffed characters. Sometimes you just can't get away from them.