Edgar Allan Poe Cottage

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It’s hard to imagine today that the Bronx’s gritty Fordham neighborhood was ever a place where one could escape for fresh country air. But Edgar Allan Poe did just that, leaving disease-ridden Manhattan in 1846 for this modest rural cottage, still standing in an unlikely park off the four-lane Grand Concourse. Now preserved as a museum, the five-room home was the last place Poe would ever live—and stands as the only remaining farmhouse in the Bronx, then a part of Westchester County. A tour doesn’t last more than half an hour, with only three furnished rooms to see. All that remains from Poe’s days in the cottage are his wicker rocking chair and the rope bed in which his wife, Virginia, died of tuberculosis in 1847. But knowledgeable docents give a compelling account of the author’s tragedy-marred life, while the claustrophobic quarters and seven-foot ceilings drive home his financial struggles. An informative (if dated) eighteen-minute video fills in the gaps. — Carey Jones