Long Neglected Edgar Allan Poe Cottage Looking For Maintenance Funds

Capital work is finally moving forward on the long neglected Edgar Allan Poe house, part of the Parks Department's Historic House Trust. According to the Daily News it costs about $300,000 a year to run the cottage located on East Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse. The city pays about 40%, and The Bronx County Historical Society pays the remainder. The Society is trying to raise a $2 million endowment. The cottage, which is on the National Register of Historic Places is closed during the six- to nine-month $ 1 million dollar renovation that began in August. (Photo: R Chu for the New York Daily News)

Bronx

Edgar Allan Poe may have died penniless, but the Bronx County Historical Society is trying to raise $2 million on the strength of his name, according to the New York Daily News.

The not-for-profit group hopes to create an endowment for the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage in Fordham to help with operating expenses.

"In order to do our very best, we need to do this," said Kathy McAuley, director of the Poe Cottage, where the author of mystery and macabre wrote some of his better known works. "There are so many things we are not able to do because of a small budget."

It costs about $300,000 a year to run the city-owned cottage at East Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. The city pays about 40%, with the society footing the remainder.

The society operates through donations and some city and state grants. So far, nearly $20,000 has been raised for the endowment, McAuley said.

"It will let us expand our hours and our programming. And it will take some of the pressure off the historical society to pay the expenses," she said.

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Bronx County Historical Society trying to raise $2 million to preserve Edgar Allan Poe's cottage

New York Daily News - November 3, 2010 - By Mike Jaccarino

City Reneges on Deal for Historic Wyckoff-Bennett 1766 Homestead

BROOKLYN

WITH a spinning wheel in the attic, flintlock rifles on the walls, foot warmers at the hearth and a horse-drawn sleigh in the barn, Annette and Stuart Mont are well-equipped for 18th-century colonial farm life, according to the New York Times.

Except they are living in Brooklyn in 2010.

Home is an antiques-crammed pre-Revolutionary white Dutch farmhouse and barn that rise like ghostly apparitions amid apartment clusters and buzzing traffic on East 22nd Street and Avenue P in the Madison section. The Monts, who bought the place fully equipped for $160,000 in 1983, are only the third family to occupy what is known as the Wyckoff-Bennett Homestead since it was built around 1766.

“It’s a living museum,” said Mrs. Mont, 69, a retired psychotherapist and teacher.

But a plan for the city to acquire the 4,000-square-foot home, which was designated as a landmark by the city in 1968 and put on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, has broken down in acrimony.

The Monts say that starting a decade ago, city officials offered to buy the house and its contents for $2 million while letting them stay on rent-free as caretakers, but that the officials reneged on the deal last year. Franklin Vagnone, executive director of the Historic House Trust, which helps the parks department preserve historic houses located in city parks, called the place “a wonderful artifact” but said the city “was unfortunately not able to negotiate terms with the current owners.”

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A Prewar Home, to Say the Least

New York Times - January 29, 2010 - By Ralph Blumenthal