September 29 3.30 – 6.00 pm 
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at the Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum (203 N Amity St)
Sponsored by Walkable Cities | Google Map Link
Price: free (excluding rental or your own bicycle)
Our last poetry cycle, covering almost 5 miles, begins at the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, a significant site for literary enthusiasts and history buffs alike. This modest brick row house, built around 1830, was Poe’s residence from approximately 1833 to 1835, after he left West Point at the age of 23. It was in this house that Poe began to gain recognition for his short stories, winning a contest with “MS. Found in a Bottle,” and writing “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall” along with poems like “Latin Hymn,” “Enigma,” and “Serenade.”
Next, we head to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) Train Station. In 1828, Edgar is 19 years old now, B&O construct alongside the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company (SCC&RR), which used British steam-powered trains, the oldest common carrier railroad companies in the United States. Initially, the B&O used horsepower, and on February 11, 1831, it made its first trip with an American-built locomotive, Tom Thumb. This locomotive, capable of pulling passenger and freight cars at 18 miles per hour, famously lost a legendary race with a horse-drawn car on August 28, 1830, due to a mechanical failure.
Investors of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad hoped it would help Baltimore compete with New York for western trade. Eight years later, trains were running between Baltimore and Philadelphia. By 1908, with the completion of the Hudson and Manhattan Railroad tunnel, it was possible to travel by train from Baltimore to New York.
After B&O, we cycle via Babe Ruth Birthhouse and Museum (Babe Ruth, nicknamed “the Bambino” and “the Sultan of Swat”, is considered by many to be the greatest baseball player of all time) to Westminster Hall and Burying Ground to visit Poe’s grave. Initially buried in 1849 in a small grave. On November 15, 1875, Poe’s remains were moved together with Poe’s wife, Virginia, and his mother-in-law, Maria to a new grave with a larger monument. Among others, John H. B. Latrobe and the famous poet Walt Whitman attended the ceremony.
Whitman made several references to Poe and in the Daily Eagle. Not only did he reprint Poe’s “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains” in the paper, but satires of Poe’s work as well, including the unsigned “A Jig in Prose,” a parody of “The Raven.” Whitman didn’t speak publicly on Poe’s work or life during the ceromony. However, the next day Whitman recognizes in a November 16, 1875 Washington Star article, Poe’s status in literary history.
From there, we proceed and cycle along the Lexington Market (originally, Western Precincts Market). The Market is one of the longest-running public markets in the nation, having been around since 1782. When they had money, the family would travel to Lexington Market, several blocks east of the house for food. However, Poe and his relatives were very poor, and were sometimes forced to beg for help from relatives around town. For water, the Poe clan would have to trek about 15-20 minutes to the west, to a small stream.
After a short stop at the market we cycle to the Orchard Street AM.E. Church. In 1825 prayers started in the home of Truman Le Pratt, a Caribbean-born former slave. A formal building was built in 1837 — free Blacks and slaves donated their labor and built the structure at night by torchlight. The present church building was built in 1882. According to oral tradition, the church’s original buildings served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. During the 1970s, constructions workers uncovered a secret tunnel underneath the church, which is now the oldest standing building constructed by Blacks in the city of Baltimore.
After we cycle along the Maryland Historical Society which was founded in 1844 by a group of Marylanders seeking to preserve the state’s unique history. From the Maryland Historical Society we can see the Washington Monument already. It was raised 30 years after George Washington’s death in 1799. To fund the monument, the city held a lottery. Just like today, lotteries were a popular way of raising money for civic projects. With the $100,000 raised from the lottery, the city commissioned architect Robert Mills to construct the monument. Mills, the first American-trained architect, later designed the Mall at Washington D.C. Upon seeing the massive monument and other statues under construction in 1827, President John Quincy Adams called Baltimore “The Monumental City.” The phrase stuck, and Baltimore has had the nickname ever since. The streets near the monument still have parts of the original cobblestone from the 1800’s. The same stones as Edgar Allan Poe must have walked on.
After the monument we pass the Peabody Institute. It’s a library and conservatorium founded by George Peabody. The library interior is often regarded as one of the most beautiful libraries in the world. After the conservarotium we pass the Walters Art Museum. The museum has some artworks of Gustave Doré (French, 1832-1883). This French artist illustrated the first Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” (1883) print. It was his last work before his death on January 23, 1883. After his death his drawings were turned over to Harper & Brothers in New York City, where fourteen master engravers were hired to rush the volume to press. The plates had to be cut in steel rather than copper because of the size of the edition. At the nearby Princeton University in New Jersey you can find some of those steel plates with the etches. The Baltimore Museum Of Art has some Édouard Manet’s lithographs of The Raven (Le Corbeau) from 1875.
Now we pass the Baltimore Basilica which was built primarily between 1806 and 1821 and the Enoch Pratt Free Library (second structure – built 1931-1933). The Central Library is closed at Sunday but when you are in Baltimore it’s definitely worth visiting as they have a big Edgar Allan Poe collection. The next stop is Latrobe House. On an evening in October, 1833, three of Baltimore’s most discerning gentlemen were gathered around a table in the back parlor of this house. Fortified with ‘some old wine and some good cigars,’ John Pendleton Kennedy, James H. Miller, and John H. B. Latrobe pored over manuscripts submitted in a literary contest sponsored by the weekly periodical The Baltimore Saturday Visitor. Their unanimous choice for the best prose tale was Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘MS. Found in a Bottle,’ a curious and haunting tale of annihilation. The story was printed in the October 19 edition of the Visitor which was established in 1832 by Charles Cloud and Lambert Wilmer, a friend of Poe.
Now we cross the Jones Falls River. We don’t see the river as it is tunneled from Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Station till it exits and flows several more blocks before it runs into the east side of the Inner Harbor. The river is tunneled to make space for the Jones Falls Expressway (Interstate 83) above. The river was also the barrier that saved East Baltimore and the now populaire southeastern neighborhoods Little Italy and Fell’s Point when the Great Baltimore Fire raged from Sunday February 7 to Monday February 8, 1904. In the fire, more than 1,500 buildings were completely leveled, and some 1,000 severely damaged. Like a miracle the Great Fire directly caused no deaths. Shortly after we crossed the river we stop at the Baltimore Phoenix Shot Tower. Completed in 1828, this red brick shot tower, standing at 234.25 feet (71.40 m), was the tallest structure in the United States at that time. We then visit the Lloyd Street Synagogue, built in 1845 as the first synagogue in Maryland and now the third oldest standing synagogue in the United States, although it is no longer in use.
Next, we visit the Washington University Hospital of Baltimore, later known as Church Home or Church Hospital, where Poe was brought in a carriage on October 3, 1849. Four days later, he died in this hospital. The exact details of Poe’s condition and treatment remain unclear, with his attending physician, Dr. John J. Moran, providing inconsistent accounts over the years. Theories about Poe’s death include suicide, murder, cholera, hypoglycemia, rabies, syphilis, influenza, brain tumor, and cooping.
On our way to Fell’s Point we pass the Baltimore American Indian Center & Heritage Museum. The non-profit organisation that runs the museum was founded in 1968. Following WWII, the neighborhood surrounding the BAIC became populated predominantly by American Indians and was in that time referred to as “the Reservation.” The center provides a welcoming, safe space for the Native community to gather; a place where people are treated with dignity, respect and understanding, and where cultural practices are kept alive.
Our final stops are in Fell’s Point. We first visit the William Price House, where Frederick Douglass worked just before escaping to freedom. After we visit Robert Longs House, this house is built in 1765 and is now the oldest surviving residence within Baltimore. After we will visit The Horse You Came In On Saloon. At the oldest continuously operating saloon, we drink a beer. This saloon claims even to be the last place Edgar Allan Poe was seen before his delirium and sudden death.
Our Poetry Cycle ends at the Frederick Douglass Head. Frederick Douglass, born as Frederick Bailey as he changed his name in later life, was an African-American abolitionist, orator, newspaper publisher, and author famous for his first autobiography, ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself’. He became the first Black U.S. marshal and was the most photographed American man of the 19th century. One of his poems I like is:
Liberty
He loves to see his eyrie seat
Some Rock on ocean’s lonely shore
Whose old bare top, the tempest beat
And round whose base the billows roar,
Or mount through tempest shrouded air
All thick and dark, with wild wind swelling
Or brave the lightning’s lurid glare,
And talk with thunders in their dwelling.
Frederick escaped from slavery in 1838 by posing as a free sailor wearing a red shirt, a tarpaulin hat, and a black scarf tied loosely around his neck. He boarded a train bound for Philadelphia. On sped the train, and I was well on my way…when the conductor came into the negro car to collect tickets and examine the papers of his black passengers. This was a critical moment in the drama. Frederick had to be able to sound, as well as look, like a sailor: My knowledge of ships and sailor’s talk came much to my assistance, for I knew a ship from stem to stern, and from keelson to cross-trees, and could talk sailor like an ‘old salt.’
