Edgar Allan Poe’s Richmond, Part 2: Everything Not the Edgar Allan Poe Museum


December 31, 2011 — If you visit Richmond only to see the Edgar Allan Poe Museum (see Part 1 here), people will probably make fun of you. After all, Richmond holds a variety of historical and cultural wonders worth checking in on Facebook at. Not me, though. If you leave Richmond having only seen Poe’s stockings, it’s a successful trip, in my obnoxious opinion. But if you need an excuse to see the rest of Richmond while you’re in town, Poe can do that for you, too.

I've seen most of the Poe-related sites in New York, Boston, and Baltimore, but none of those cities by themselves have the depth and breadth that Richmond has. For instance, besides the already mentioned museum, Poe also has a statue in town, which, while not as artistically impressive as the Moses Ezekiel statue in Baltimore, is placed in a much more prominent place…right on the grounds of the State Capitol Building.



The bronze statue of Poe was created in the mid-1950s by sculptor Charles Rudy at the funding of a doctor named George Edward Barksdale, who then gave it to the “people of Virginia,” according to the inscription on its pink granite base. There was no mention on the monument of a tax write-off.

The sculpture is about five feet tall (the base adds another four feet) and depicts Poe in a seated position, with a manuscript in one hand and a quill in the other. However, because of the somewhat odd angle of the neck and hands, it almost looks more like the statue of a lifeless Poe marionette than of Poe himself. Actually, that might make it more worth seeing.


You can find it in the southwest corner of Capitol Square, near the intersection of 9th and Franklin Streets, within eye- and ear-shot of the ceremonial, uh, tintinnabulation of Richmond’s almost 190-year-old Bell Tower, which these days is a visitor welcome center.

Poe had multiple homes in Richmond, all of which have been demolished over time, unfortunately. However, just like Boston…which made the same mistake…they did put up a plaque near the location of his boyhood home. The plaque that denotes the Allan residence is located at the intersection of 5th and Main Streets on the side of a turquoise-painted brick building. Like just about every plaque in the world, it’s anticlimactic, but it does have the three-lettered surname on it that validates its existence more than yours or mine.


Richmond was able to preserve at least one important residence connected to Poe. At 2407 East Grace Street is the 170-year-old brick house that was once the home of Elmira Shelton, who was engaged to Poe not once, but twice in their lives, when he was 17 and again when he was 40. The first one was broken off by her father while Poe was in college at the University of Virginia. The second one was broken off by Death himself during Poe’s mysterious last hours in Baltimore.

Finally, even though they don't have the body of Poe like Baltimore does, they do have plenty of other corpses worth a Poe pilgrimage.

The grave of his birth mother, Elizabeth Arnold Poe, who died in Richmond, is in the churchyard of St. John’s Church at 2401 East Broad Street. This is the church famous in U.S. history for being the location of Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech. As we all know, he eventually got both.

The large monument marking her grave is easy to see in the small churchyard, up against one of the walls. It’s a tall, light-colored slab of carved stone with a large bronze medallion at the top bearing the image of a woman with an urn, out of which pops, naturally, a raven. On the back, another large bronze medallion includes a long quote from a work of Poe’s theater criticism, where he boasts about being the son of an actress whose short career was one of “genius and beauty.” The monument was installed more than a century after her death over what was then her unmarked remains.


The rest of the graves Poe would have visited in his life are located in a single graveyard called Shockoe Hill Cemetery. Established in 1822 and spanning a small 12.7 acres, the cemetery’s greatest claim to fame is being the resting place for Chief Justice John Marshall.

Of more interest to the likes of us, though, are the graves of Poe’s foster parents John and Frances Allan. They’re buried right on the path behind the easy-to-spot, gated Marshall plot. John’s grave is marked by a tall pillar and flanked by two shorter ones, one for Frances and the other for his second wife, Louisa.

It’s a strange feeling seeing John Allan’s gravestone. In many ways he was the villain of Poe’s story, the wealthy patron so incensed by the way his ward turned out that he left nothing for Poe in his will, although he did leave money for an illegitimate child few knew about. In fact, standing there, it’s hard to know which side to come down on, reverence or vandalism. After all, it’s either because of this guy that we have Poe’s tormented genius or because of this guy that we don’t have more of it.


Elsewhere in the cemetery, and of less mixed feelings, are two of Poe’s muses. The first is Elmira herself. Her grave is in the north corner of the cemetery and is marked by a table-type monument, the engraving on which has worn away to almost nothing so that you really have to know what you’re looking for to find it.

Better labeled is the tall, urn-topped grave of Jane Stanard, for whom Poe wrote his famous poem, To Helen. She was the mother of a friend of his who encouraged him as a young teenager in his literary pursuits. She died at the age of 28, not long after meeting him. A plaque at the base of the memorial acknowledges her status as Poe’s Helen, and goes on to quote his The Valley Nis, which features a character, or at least the grave of a character, named Helen.

Shockoe Hill Cemetery is located at the intersection of 2nd and Hospital Streets, and judging by its Facebook page, there’s a pretty active community around it…small and humble though it is. In fact, when I visited, there was a map posted showing all the graves of note on the premises, without which my visit would have been a failure in a life so full of them I’ve had to lobby Webster’s to change the definition. So sincere thanks for that, Shockoe people.

Here’s a Google map of Poe’s Richmond that I put together for you (click on it for a larger size). For reference, the legend is below and the distance between Site 1 and site 3 is 0.9 miles. Probably shouldn't get used to this level of helpfulness from this site, though. I'm just feeling all for auld lang syne-ish.


 Legend
1. Edgar Allan Poe Museum: 1914 East Main Street
2. Edgar Allan Poe Statue: 9th and Franklin Streets
3. Plaque for Poe's House: 5th and Main Streets
4. Elmira Shelton House: 2407 East Grace Street
5. St. John's Church, Grave of Poe's Birth Mother: 2401 East Broad Street
6. Shockoe Hill Cemetery, Graves of Poe's Foster Parents, Fiancee, and Muse: 2nd and Hospital Streets


More of my visits to Poe sites:

Poe's Richmond, Part I: Edgar Allan Poe Museum
Poe's Boston
Poe's Statue (Baltimore)
Poe's Graves (Baltimore)
Poe's Graves, Revisited
Poe's New York








Edgar Allan Poe’s Richmond, Part 1: Edgar Allan Poe Museum


December 23, 2011 — In the horror version of the word association game, the name "Edgar Allan Poe," elicits a range of responses: macabre, author, poet, alcoholic, raven, moustache. One response that I'm pretty sure it doesn’t elicit, though, is “Southerner.” But it should. Sure, Poe was born in Boston and lived substantial parts of his life in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, but the largest swathe of his short time on this black Earth was spent in Richmond, VA, the capital of the Confederacy.

Poe was born in 1809, and after the death of his parents in 1812 was taken in by a wealthy Richmond couple named John and Frances Allan. As a result, he lived in the city off and on for about a third of his life, and it was in Richmond that many of the fence posts of his life were planted.


For instance, it was in Richmond that he was engaged (and dis-engaged) to Elmira Royster, in Richmond that he started making his mark on the literary world at the Southern Literary Messenger, and in Richmond that he married his 13-year-old cousin Virginia Clemm. It was also Richmond that was the stage for the central story of Poe’s life, his extremely bad relationship with his foster father.


But much more than mere biography facts connect Poe to this often overlooked city. Graves of family members, plaques, historical houses, and a statue all proclaim the city’s Poe-ness. But I’ll cover all that in Part II, because the best bit of Poephernalia in the country this side of his Baltimore grave is Richmond’s Edgar Allan Poe Museum.

Established in 1922, the Poe Museum is located downtown at 1914 East Main Street and consists of a series of mostly early 20th century buildings surrounding an oblong courtyard. The small, stone house that is the entrance was build circa 1750 and is the oldest building in the city, predating Poe himself and offering the compelling image of a man slouching past it, completely unaware that 70 years after his death it would be dedicated to his legacy.

Inside that building is the gift shop and an adjacent exhibit room that was filled with period furniture upon my visit, including the piano forte of Poe’s sister Rosalie.


From there, we entered the courtyard, which they call the Enchanted Garden. Inspired by his poem, To One in Paradise, it’s basically a shrine that was created a year before the museum itself where admirers would gather to celebrate a genius unrecognized in his life.

The area is mostly open, contains a fountain, and is bordered at the far end by a deceptively plain brick portico of sorts made out of salvaged bricks from the building that housed the Southern Literary Messenger, where Poe was an editor. Centered inside this somewhat-sacristy is a single white bust of the author. While we were there the courtyard was set up for a wedding for a couple much cooler than the rest of us.

From there we went into the Model Building, so-called because the small exhibit space inside is dominated by a giant model of Richmond as it was during Poe’s time. Various points of relevance to Poe’s life are marked on it, including the many places within the city that he lived, loved, and loathed.


Also here is furniture from his childhood home with the Allans. Most interesting among these otherwise ordinary-looking pieces was Poe’s actual bed, a small, hard, disagreeable-looking thing that testified to the existence of a humanity whose sense of comfort had not yet evolved to its current advanced state. It’s also where, I assume, Poe had his best and most influential childhood nightmares. They should rent it out to writers-blocked horror authors.

Another building, the Exhibits Building, is used was for temporary installations. On the bottom floor at the time of our visit, was a room-sized reproduction of the scene from The Pit and the Pendulum, very much like a room one would pass in a haunted house attraction quality-wise. Upstairs was an open room full of paintings of Poe, his family, and various scenes from his stories that makes one wonder, if Poe had been a visual genius instead of a literary one what eye-gouging horrors he’d have blinded us with.


However, despite all the fascinating bits of Poe’s life and legacy we’d seen thus far, the best building by the length of a conqueror worm is the Elizabeth Poe Memorial Building. Inside this building dedicated to his birth mother were artifacts from his adult life and literary career.

These artifacts includes clothes that he wore, hair from the head of his corpse, autographs, first editions of his work, and other such objects. In one corner was a set of stairs saved from one of his homes. Against the wall was a large trunk and a matching broken key, the latter of which had been found in his pocket during his final fevered and insensate days.


Against another wall was a desk from the aforementioned Southern Literary Messenger. Poe’s actual desk, the one where I’m hoping he snuck time to work on his own projects, is in the collection of the Henry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin. However, Poe’s actual desk chair was there in Richmond, the back of which Poe had hacked off to improve his posture. There was also an exhibit on Vincent Price and the Roger Corman Poe films, proving once and for all you can top a cherry with a cherry. Heck, this is probably where the wedding should have been held.


Like so many others, I often demi-deify Poe. Like he wasn't an actual human being that stumbled over sidewalk cracks and waited in lines at post offices and forgot what he came into the room to get. That he was instead some kind of special literary force that pervaded the ether and incarnated itself into neatly spaced writing that captivated readers whenever it so deigned. So to see actual, physical objects from his life...well, it didn't change any of that for me. Instead of humanizing him, the objects themselves turned into holy relics.

It was hard to exit back through that front building and leave so much of Poe behind, a feeling that was only somewhat salved by having the chance to buy a plush version of the poet or a T-shirt with a black cat whose outline glowed in the dark or a necklace made out of silver orangutan fingerprints (just kidding on that last…but you can buy that at my Etsy shop).

As with any artist, though, the work they leave behind and, in his case, which sits just 10 feet behind me as I write this—heck, as I write anything—is still so much more palpable than anything else that survives, even if it is a pair of stockings and a vest.


Christmas in Manhattan


December 17, 2011 — If you're at all obsessive about Christmas, you need to visit Manhattan in December before you die...next week (sorry to be the bearer of that bad news, by the way). I've been fortunate/insane enough to visit this central borough of New York City twice in the past few weeks for various reasons that dimmed in importance as soon as I saw how much the entire downtown wanted to live up to the Silver Bells carol.

Christmas is everywhere in every form there, from the civic decorations on the lamp posts to the commercial ones in the shop windows to the panhandlers dressed in Santa Claus costumes hoping to trick you into taking a picture with them for a tip. The style of decorations run the entire gamut, from the gaudy, opulent, and unorthodox to the classic, the humble, and the homey.

Below are a bunch of pics from my two recent trips that don't at all do justice to the holiday wonderland this city can be. In fact, I'm sorry to waste your time with an intro. This post only really needed a title and the pics. Also, sorry that I assumed your coming demise was bad news.

May the reindeer go easy on your roof shingles. Merry Christmas.



Chestnuts roasting on an open light bulb.
Seriously, roasted chestnuts taste like
mashed potatoes.

Rockefeller Plaza


Every 20 minutes, Christmas music played and animation
would be projected onto this building in the plaza. 

The Empire State Building is ready
for St. Nick both on the outside...

...and on the inside.

The famous Macy's of
Miracle on 34th Street fame.

Unfortunately, Santa wasn't there yet when I visited,
else this post would have been all about that.

But their famous window displays were up, both
classic-looking ones...

...and strange ones.

Inside the main branch of the NYPL.

And this one is a story
for another time...








Creepy Journalism: Newseum Murderbilia


December 7, 2011 — What if I told you that there was this guy I knew who collected artifacts connected to famous killers, criminals, and crimes. You know, murder weapons, personal mementos, crime scene pieces, that kind of stuff. Murderbilia, it’s called. You’d say, “What a creep,” right? What if it was a venerable museum institution? You’d say, “Let’s go see it.” We’re all creeps.

The Newseum in Washington, DC, doesn’t refer to its collection as murderbilia, of course. They call it G-Men and Journalists, and describe it as an exhibit that explores the relationship between the media and the FBI over the course if its 100-year-old history. They just happen to do that by displaying the electric chair that fried the Lindbergh baby killer, the cabin hideaway of the Unabomber, and a KKK outfit (uniform? costume?).

Located just off the National Mall at 555 Pennsylvania Ave., this modern-looking glass and metal building with the First Amendment inscribed in giant letters on its façade has occupied that piece of the nation’s capital since 2008. Before that, the institution was located in Arlington, VA.


The purpose of the Newseum in general is to celebrate and explore journalism and how it intersects with real life—how major events are related to the public, how the medium has changed over the years, the role of journalism in society, etc. It has permanent exhibits on Pulitzer Prize-winning photography, journalist martyrs, news in the digital age, and other displays that I completely skipped during my visit.

That’s right. Other than a stop at the large section of Berlin Wall and guard tower , I headed directly to the murderbilia. I guess that’s the equivalent of skipping the news sections and going right to the obituaries.

There, I found some 200 of what I’d call amazing artifacts if they were connected to historic personages of a respectable sort, but since they’re connected to national tragedies, victims, and the most evil human gunk that modern history has produced, I’ll just call creepy stuff. Infamous is only two letters away from famous, after all.


For instance, the hat that notorious gangster John Dillinger was wearing when he was killed by law enforcement was there, along with his death mask, pistols, and other related items. They have the mockup of the DC Sniper’s car trunk that was used in his trial. Patty Hearst’s coat and gun were there. There are artifacts connected to the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh, 9/11, and all kinds of other things.

Basically, it’s a lot of disturbing stuff that I paid an entry fee to find myself within sneezing distance of. And that’s the real point of it all, I think. File it under journalism, if you want, but the real point of seeing actual artifacts of this nature is to be disturbed. Also to be thrilled. And to be disturbed that we can be thrilled by this kind of stuff.

But that’s okay. It’s good for us to be disturbed. We need it. But I’ll not get preachy. Let’s just look at some pics of museum-sanitized murderbilia together. It’s a lot more enjoyable than going to the dank basement of that guy I know to see his collection.

Oh, and according to the museum website, the exhibit is a temporary one, although it will be around throughout 2012. Something tells me, though, that they’re going to deny parole for most of these objects. It has to be their most popular draw, if…um…I’m any indication, I guess.

Artifacts found among the wreckage of the Waco tragedy.

Oklahoma City bomber, including McVeigh's driver's license in the bottom center.

Objects from the horrible, horrible
Lindbergh baby kidnapping case.

Trunk reproduction of D.C. Sniper John Allen Muhammad. I lived and worked in the area at the time 
and remember that October vividly. So this nefariousness makes me feel homesick, I guess.

Patty Hearst heard the burst of
Roland's Thompson gun and bought it.
Also, she starred in Bio-Dome.

The centerpiece of the exhibit, I think. The actual cabin hideout of Ted Kaczynski, Unabomber. 

The cabin was too small to take a good picture of what it looked like inside, so here's a bad one.

More Unabomber artifacts.

The infamous Unabomber Manifesto.








Toys “R” Us Times Square


December 2, 2011— My understanding of the relationship between Santa Claus and toy stores has always been vague. Television commercials have variously told me that it’s either a competitive situation or a supplier-distributor one. I’m really hoping it’s the latter, because I don’t think even St. Nick could compete with a life-size animatronic Jurassic Park dinosaur like the one at Toys “R” Us Times Square.

Opened in 2001, this massive toy store is three floors’ worth of toys and candy covering a total of 110,000 square feet. Certainly, that by itself is enough to make you want to be a Toys “R” Us kid again.

However, this particular Rus—as they dubbed the retail chain in the movie Free Enterprise and which I’ll call it from here on out to avoid the strange sadness I feel at not have a backwards “R” key—is billed as more of a tourist attraction than a retail establishment. You can do that when you have a working 30-foot Ferris wheel inside your store.


The façade of the building, like the rest of Times Square, is covered in gigantic wraparound billboard that they use for their own purposes or, judging by what was up there when I visited, whoever will help them pay their building lease.

Inside, the three floors wrap themselves around the centerpiece Ferris wheel. Each car is themed with characters from major toy licenses, including, Scooby Doo, Toy Story, Monopoly, those anthropomorphic M&Ms, and Nickelodeon. My favorite car was the nostalgic pairing of the classic Geoffrey the Giraffe mascot with E.T. the Extraterrestrial. I don’t remember ever having an imaginary tea party as a kid, but had I, both of these guys would’ve been high up on the invite list.

Dominating all the things for sale on pegs that we’re use to in toy stores are oversized versions of toys, including superheroes dangling from the ceiling, Clone Wars Star Wars characters perched atop shelves with lighsabers/blasters at the ready, a Barbie dollhouse, Playmobil toys, and the Lego sculptures that are almost too ubiquitous in the world to be interesting these days. I don’t even remember the actual toys for sale because I was too busy marveling at all these home decorating ideas.


But that’s cool, because toys aren’t the only stuff you can buy here. They’ve got candy. And not just in ancient gumball machines like at your and my hometown Rus. They have an entire section dedicated to and themed around Willy Wonka (where you can scoop bulk candy from mushrooms), another around the CandyLand board game, and a third section dedicated to an ice cream station called Scoops “R” Us that will probably go franchise when online retailers finally beat physical toy stores into sad attic toy boxes.

But the Times Square Rus isn’t just a place to sell. It’s also a place to stage. They have a calendar of events that includes visits from famous kid’s entertainers and costumed characters, and any time there’s a big toy release, they often have a midnight madness event, as chronicled here when Star Wars Episode III toys first came out in 2005.


The most amazing part of this (am I still calling it a) toy store, is that tucked into a corner of the third floor, in front of a facsimile of the Jurassic Park gates, is a life-sized, realistic-looking, animatronic Jurassic Park dinosaur.

I would need to commune with Buddhist monks at a secluded mountain monastery for a few years before I could adequately explain the wonder of what it’s like to feel it loom over you while it turns its toothy head and blinks its beady eyes, reducing your self-image to nothing more than meaty prey. I mean, the FAO Schwartz at Central Park might have class, legacy, and a Big cameo on its side, but Rus has the T-Rex that maimed Jeff Goldblum and made us all fear glasses of water.

Now, I don’t know if they do enough retail business to cover the cost of their expensive Times Square real estate, but that’s not the point. The point is that when you’re the “biggest toy store there is” you need a flagship location that’ll have adults trampling children to get inside. And I personally know of at least four that will grow up flatter than they would ordinarily have been thanks to my visit.



















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