On October 3, 1849, a distraught, disheveled and semi-conscious Edgar Allan Poe was brought in a carriage to the Washington University Hospital of Baltimore (also called the Washington College Hospital; later known as Church Home or Church Hospital). Four days later on October 7, 1849, Poe was dead at the age of 40.
The circumstances surrounding Poe's death are extremely mysterious. Many theories exist to rationalize Poe's condition: hypoglycemia, depression, drug-induced hallucinations, and conspiratorial murder plots have all been proposed as potential death knells by his biographers.
Poe's own attending physician in his final days, Dr. John J. Moran, proved to be more successful in capitalizing on those last moments of interaction with Poe than actually caring for him as a patient. His accounts of Poe's condition and actions during those last days became more embellished as Moran hit the lecture circuit.
In 1853, several attempts were made to burn down Washington University Hospital by residents of the neighborhood. Apparently, they had grown tired of the hospital's reputation for digging up bodies from the cemetery down the street for dissection.
A hospital worker recalled, "It was said there had been people kidnapped and taken in there which made Washington College a horror to the people in the city of Baltimore. After the sun went down you hardly ever saw a person anywhere near it."
Today, a new housing complex called Broadway Overlook has been built on the former grounds of the hospital. According to The Dome (a John Hopkins Medicine periodical), the room where Poe died is currently occupied.
