The museum features the life and career of Edgar Allan Poe, documenting his accomplishments with pictures, relics, and verse, and focusing on his many years in Richmond. The Museum was opened in 1922 in the Old Stone House, Richmond's oldest standing structure, only blocks from the sites of Poe's first Richmond home and his first place of employment. Four buildings have been added to the house growing Poe collection. The buildings open onto a walled garden of evergreens and flowers. This Enchanted Garden, inspired by Poe's poems "To One in Paradise" and "To Helen" (1848), has made the Museum a green oasis in a busy downtown district. It provides a perfect setting for special events and weddings.The Museum maintains a library and encourages students, scholars, and devotees of the legendary writer to utilize its extensive collection of books and manuscripts.
Guided tours of the Museum begin with a large scale model of Richmond as Poe knew it-a vanished historic neighborhood in which the poet lived and worked. Poe called himself a Virginian and spent more of his life in Richmond than in any other city: it was here that he was raised, here that he married, and here that he first gained national recognition, as a member of the staff of the Southern Literary Messenger. Viewing the model of Richmond in Poe's time, visitors are able to retrace the poet's steps from the Allan house at 14th Street and Tobacco Alley, to the Exchange Hotel, where he gave his last public reading.
Poe's real parents themselves were married in Richmond, and here Poe's gifted actress mother died. The Elizabeth Arnold Poe Memorial Building, named in her honor, houses items the poet would have known: a stair case from the 14th Street Allan home; furnishings from the mansion Moldavia; a desk and chair from the Messenger offices. There are a number of Poe's personal effects, documents highlighting his career, and a gallery of photographs, daguerreotypes, and paintings of his family and friends. The memorial building also contains the massive memorial sculpture by Richard H. Park honoring Poe and his parents. This magnificent work, commissioned by New York actors and executed in Florence, Italy, was unveiled on May 4, 1885 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and came to the Poe Museum on permanent loan in 1993.
The Exhibition Hall contains a gallery for rotating exhibits. Also on display there are furnishings from the 14th Street Allan home including Poe's childhood bed, a coverlet, and a mantle. These items have been arranged to recreate young Edgar's bedroom where he would have spent hours developing the images that would later become the basis of his works.
Across the hall from Poe's bedroom is The Raven Room. Here are displayed sombre illustrations of Poe's most famous poem, "The Raven," which were created by the artist James Carling in the 1880's. Carling supported himself as a sidewalk artist and vaudeville caricaturist before devoting his talents to "The Raven," whose author, Carling felt, was the "greatest poet this world has ever seen. "Carling's drawings are a graphic visual representation of the images Poe constructed in his immortal poem.
The Old Stone House was already a landmark in the poet's day and stood in the center of Richmond as he knew it. Lafayette-who expressed gratitude for the aid of Poe's grandfather in Baltimore during the Revolution-was entertained in the Old Stone House in 1824, and young Edgar Poe was a member of the city's Junior Volunteer Honor Guard which served as Lafayette's escort during his visit to Richmond. In Poe's day the house was inhabited by descendants of the Ege and Scherer families, German emigrants who built the home shortly after the city was founded. The house now contains a museum shop where visitors may choose from a variety of items ranging from first editions of Poe's works to books, prints, post cards, and T-Shirts.
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