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Edgar Allen Poe’s home in the Bronx to be restored

Poe Cottage, the Bronx home of writer Edgar Allan Poe, will close this winter for restoration

A new, $3.2 million visitor center, seen in an artist’s conception, is slated to open in 2009.

There may not be ravens rapping at the door of Edgar Allan Poe’s final home in the Bronx.

But with a planned $250,000 fix-up and a new visitor center, thousands more tourists are expected to make the pilgrimage to Poe Cottage.

After two moves and years of being shaken by cars on the Grand Concourse and the nearby subway, the house of the famed poet and writer is in bad shape. Paint is peeling, the plaster is cracked and there are cobwebs on the rain-damaged windows.

Once restored, the house will have a fresh coat of paint, new green shutters, a ramp for the handicapped and, ideally, a projected increase of 6,000 tourists a year, said Kathleen McCauley, manager of the cottage in Poe Park, at the Concourse and Kingsbridge Road.

“It’s gone through a lot of transformations,” she said. “Poe would have liked that.”

The design of the new, $3.2 million, 2,000-square-foot visitor center was inspired by Poe’s poem, “The Raven.”

The slate shingles are meant to look like feathers, and the roof sweeps down like bird wings. The bathroom walls will have an abstract picture of Poe’s face.

Repairs and the visitor center are being funded by a combination of federal and city dollars and from donations to the Bronx Historical Society, which operates the facility. The city Parks Department owns it.

The visitor center is due to open in August 2009, while the cottage will be closed for repairs sometime this winter and reopened in 2010.

The cottage, where Poe spent the last years of his life and wrote “Annabel Lee,” “The Bells,” and “Eldorado,” now sees about 4,000 visitors annually.

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BRONX BOYS OF SUMMER 

The borough’s parks are all being renovated at once, so local teams are sharing crowded turf.

Construction equipment behind them and other teams all around, members of the Love Gospel Assembly Little League found themselves betwixt and between at one recent practice

A view of the Croton Water Filtration Plant under construction, looking northwest from the roof of Montefiore Medical Center.

A stream of cash pouring into the Parks Department budget has created a rehabilitation bonanza at Bronx parks, but the mostly welcome windfall is also displacing community sports teams and visitors to parks across the borough.

As an incentive for Bronx officials to agree to the construction of the nearly $3 billion Croton Water Filtration Plant in Van Cortlandt Park by the New York City Department of Environmental Preservation, the agency agreed to give the Parks Department $220 million to $260 million for rehabilitation projects at 63 parks around the borough.

The deal had one major provision: The money had to be spent by 2009. Officials in the borough aren’t completely sure why that deadline exists, but the result is a rush to spend. As the weather warmed up and both children’s and adults’ baseball teams hit the diamonds, they faced a flurry of rehabbing that’s made it hard to play.

Although park renovation sounds like a great thing to many, critics also fault the undertaking for including too little community input, benefiting disadvantaged neighborhoods like Hunts Point, Soundview and Highbridge less than other areas, and even possibly contravening DEP’s own charter.

“It’s inconveniencing a lot of people with the construction they’re doing,” said Anthony Robles, president of the Bronx Panthers youth football team. The Panthers were booted from the Williamsbridge Oval Park, in nearby Norwood, due to a construction project. Robles said he learned of the Oval project “right when they were coming in with the equipment and closing off the fields.”

Having to share their field, members of the Love Gospel Assembly Little League were forced to move due to several rain puddles at home plate. Coach Rory Gilbert said, “We have to coexist – but I have permits for this field.” Referring to two other large groups, including the young football players currently using the field, Gilbert added, “But I’m getting ready to start batting and if they have a problem with that, I really can’t do anything.”

Obtaining a field requires that an applicant fill out a form and pay an $8 per hour fee, with a two hour use minimum, but one Parks Department staffer explained: “The big problem is if we have the availability.”

When completed, Harris Park – where fences went up in April and several teams are now sharing one field – will have four new ball fields, a multipurpose field as well as a new track, playground and an exercise equipment room with showers.

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New Recycling Sites In Bronx

BROOKLYN — Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Sanitation Commissioner John J. Doherty earlier this week announced that four new heavily trafficked sites have been added to the Department of Sanitation’s (DSNY) successful Public Space Recycling Program.

Sixteen new sets of blue and green recycling receptacles have been placed at the four sites, which were selected based on pedestrian traffic volume, proximity to commercial districts and transportation facilities, and the volume of recyclable materials that were entering the waste stream in litter baskets. “Now New Yorkers who read the paper on the subway or drink a bottle of water while commuting have more places to recycle their paper and plastics,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “Increasing recycling rates is one of the ambitious goals in our Solid Waste Management Plan, and I hope to further expand public space recycling in the future.”

The new public space recycling locations are:

• Bronx — White Plains Road: Brady Avenue to Pelham Parkway;
• Brooklyn — Pennsylvania Avenue: Starrett City;
• Brooklyn — Front Street: Brooklyn Heights; and
• Staten Island — Staten Island Borough Hall: Stuyvesant Place at Hyatt Street.
The existing public space recycling locations are:
• Bronx — Poe Park;
• Brooklyn — Columbus Park;
• Manhattan — Battery Park City;
• Manhattan — Union Square Park;
• Manhattan — Whitehall Street Staten Island Ferry terminal;
• Queens — Main Street commercial district in the Flushing section;
• Queens — Hoffman Park;
• Staten Island — Clove Lake Park; and
• Staten Island — Saint George Staten Island Ferry terminal.

SOURCE: BrooklynEagle.com

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26-Year-Old Man Is Killed in the Bronx

A 26-year-old man was fatally shot yesterday on a Bronx street by men who drove up in a car, pulled a handgun out of the trunk and shot him in the back, the police said.

The victim, whom the police did not identify, was taken to St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, where he was pronounced dead, the police said.

The shooting occurred shortly after 6 p.m. on Marion Avenue near Poe Park in the Bedford Park neighborhood. The police said that a black car with three or four people inside stopped where the man was standing.

Two of the men left the car and opened the trunk, and one of them removed what the police described as a black and silver handgun. The police said they did not recover a weapon.

The men approached the victim, shot him, then fled in the black car, the police said.

SOURCE: NYTimes.com

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