WALK WITH ME

FELL'S POINT, along the water where the Inner Harbor and Patapsco River come together is one of the most popular areas of the city for entertainment, dining, drinking and just plain fun for all. It offers up more restaurants and bars than any other part of Charm City plus events and festivals year round.  The area was first settled in the late 1600s and grew as a shipbuilding port, becoming established in 1763.  Hundreds of homes and buildings are listed on the National Register and today the entire community is a National Historic District.

ANN STREET WHARF.  Well, just because, and of course it is on Ann Street.  

I so wish it had been a nice day, but the overcast skies turned soon to rainy ones, so our visit was brief.  The Fell's Point area overflows with history and this made me only want more!  Top left: once a city rec pier, now a hotel, the building was featured for years as the police headquarters for the TV show, "Homicide: Life On The Street", by local resident and famed author David Simon.  Top right: open air meals against a backdrop of old buildings no longer there.  Bottom left: the Fearless, June will not walk the plank, but may be aboard come Pirate Day this September.  Bottom right: one of many pubs, I think this is the one where June and I could share a mug or two.

Transitioning to another day, another walk, but before leaving Fell's Point (note, the two pictures below are not my own, both random, unnamed from the web) this is a segue ~ The Horse You Came In On Saloon opened in 1775 and has served its customers faithfully, remaining open even during prohibition days.  It can easily lay claim to being the oldest continually operating saloon in the U.S.  And, a favorite son, Edgar Allan Poe lived nearby, so this was a favorite spot and it was not unusual to find him here.  Legend has it this may have been his last stop before either being mugged or falling drunk into a gutter and sadly meeting his too early and unfortunate death just four days later, exact cause never to be known. 

Another day found me walking about a mile to Westminster Hall, a converted Gothic Revival church built on arches above the Westminster Burying Grounds, established in 1786.  Beneath gravestones, decorated tablets and slabs, granite vaults and catacombs, many now with rusted or broken locks rest hundreds of soldiers from the American Revolution and the War of 1812.  Alongside are remains of political and civic leaders of the time.

Perhaps the most notable among residents here is Edgar Allan Poe.  Though not originally his burial place, he was moved here and placed in an unmarked grave at the back of the grounds.  In the late 1800s, school children in Baltimore, through a project called "Pennies for Poe" raised funds for a proper monument.  Poe, his wife Virginia, and mother-in-law Maria were reinterred for their final rest just inside the gates to the church.

Three roses.  Cognac.  Mystery.  For sixty-years, on the 19th of January, the anniversary of Poe's death in 1849, a visitor to the burial grounds left these as a "memorial" at Poe's gravesite.  Although some have made claim to being this visitor, no identity has ever been confirmed.  The gifts were never again left after 19 January 2009.  It remains a mystery.

"This it is and nothing more."  THE RAVEN 

First published in the American Whig Review, 1845

To read THE RAVEN in full, visit the Poetry Foundation

Thank you for walking with me,

perhaps you'll join me again, another day.