Posted by b.j beerman on February 07, 19101 at 07:46:01:
In Reply to: NYU to fell the House of Usher posted by Rock on November 15, 19100 at 23:31:39:
: The NYU wants to knock down the house Edgar Allen Poe lived in to expand their law program. Yeah, like the world needs more lawyers, less landmarks.
: Here's a bit of the article that appeared in the Daily News (I'm afraid it's pretty old):
: NYU FIGHTS REV. BILLY,'RAVEN'
: We know not the hour, warns the Bible. So here was the Right Rev. billy Talen packing his gear yesterday afternoon, ready to preach from the demolition scaffolding around Edgar Allen Poe's old home on Third St.
: The Poe residence is one of the 19th century buildings that New York University wants to tear down on W. Third for a new law school building. The matter is stil in court, but the Rev. Billy takes no chaces. Last year, with a sermon on the demolition of community gardens only half-way out of his mouth, he had to stop. "I was in Esperanza Gardens at the very moment the attourney general was approaching the bench to argue for the garden preservation, and the bulldozer came through the fence," Talen said.
: Yesterday, his stuff included a giant picture of Poe and a huge cardboard raven. In late 1844, while living at 85 W. Third St., Poe wrote "the Raven." A big baner read: REVEREND BILLY AND THE RAVENETTES SAY NO TO NYU EXPANSION.
: Talen, a performance artist, wears a clerical collar and vest as the founding angel of the Church of Stop Shopping. . .
: . . .And on the scaffolding with the Rev. Billy will be an actual Poe relative, or at least, a possibly actual one.
: "When I was a small child, I was told about a family member's deathbed confession that we were somehow related to Poe. So I'm definitely going to read 'the Raven'," says Tony Torn, an actor and director, the son of actors Rip Torn and Geraldine Page.
: Poe as not known to have left any offspring, so any kinship would have traveled down the side rails of the genetic ladder to reach Torn. . .
: . . .Getting specific, the NYU material boasts: "Mark Twain, edgar Alen Poe, Henry James, Dylan Thomas, Edna St Vincent Millay, James Baldwin, Edith Wharton, WH Auden, Walt Whitman, Edward Hopper, e.e. mings and Theodore Dreiser were all Village Residents."
:
: I wonder if that's just the list of the apartments they bulldozed.
: The article goes on to talk about how the NYU is expanding and needs more space. Its rational for the destruction is that it would be too costly to save the building and it's changed so much over the years that it wouldn't matter. This isn't the first time the NYU has done something like this. After WWII, they knocked down a section of Greenwich Village to put up drab, boring slab apartments that were the direct opposite of Village charm.
: If anyone has more information about this, or can find out how to get involved, please contact me and anyone else you know that would be interested in saving Poe's old home.