[2][5] The Poe family—which included Edgar, his wife Virginia Clemm, and her mother Maria—moved in around May 1846[6] after living for a short time in Turtle Bay, Manhattan.

[14] During his time here, he also published his series on "The Literati of New York City", controversial gossip-like discussions of literary figures and their work, including Nathaniel Parker Willis, Charles Frederick Briggs, Thomas Dunn English, Margaret Fuller, and Lewis Gaylord Clark.

[11] He found the Jesuit faculty to be "highly cultivated gentlemen and scholars [who] smoked, drank, and played cards like gentleman, and never said a word about religion.

Family friend Mary Gove Nichols wrote: "One felt that she was almost a disrobed spirit, and when she coughed it was made certain that she was rapidly passing away.

[23] The cottage was sold at auction in 1889 for $775 to William Fearing Gill in the first step of preservation[24] after the Parks Department found it to be too expensive a proposition with rent approximately four times what Poe paid.

[27][28] An article titled "Shall We Save the Poe Cottage at Fordham" was published in the Review of Reviews in 1896, urging the New York State Legislature to act on preserving the home with endorsements from Theodore Roosevelt, Hamlin Garland, William Dean Howells, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Cabot Lodge, Horace Scudder and others.

[2] The restoration and park creation were not without complaint, and many felt the money would be better spent on other ventures and further that the cottage's authenticity would be lost if it were to be moved.

[33] Vandalism continued to occur over the next few years,[34] though it tapered off by the end of the following decade, becoming less of a risk[35] due in part to the increased use of live-in caretakers.

[36] In 2007, the proposed Visitors Center for the Cottage and Bronx Historical Society in Poe Park was honored by the New York City Art Commission's 2007 Design Awards.