Poe's Life in Boston

STARK'S ANTIQUE VIEWS OF YE TOWNE OF BOSTON
"A View of the Old State House"
Engraving, 1793

In the block of buildings on the left, the second door down from the corner facing the side of the Old State House was the entrance to 14 State Street where Elizabeth Arnold and daughter Eliza lived in an auctioneering and rooming house operated by Mr. & Mrs. William Baylis in 1796.

In 1827, long after Eliza Poe had died, her second Boston-born son, 18-year old Edgar Allan Poe, would return to Boston and publish his first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, in the corner building shown to the right of the State House, then 70 Washington Street, in the office of a young printer named Calvin F. S. Thomas. Long Wharf is at the end of State Street in the distance.

Courtesy of Historic New England