The sun., 1919-07-20
Romantic Memo
ries Cling to Old
Homes and Haunts
: of Famous Men
and Women Of
Letters
By ARTHUR B. MAURICE.

Park has overlooked into Washington
Square, absorbing its side streets to
the west and taking possession of
various structures of the streets 10
the south, But long before the oldest
patron OF Polly's, or the Pirates Den.
or the Purple Pup, or the Mouse Trap,
or the Mad Hatter's saw the light Of
day, when the Village was American,
and conservative, and as bourgeois as
Bunner considered II, the Square
boasted its literary traditions and
!. was in flavor and atmosphere the
nearest approach to a Latin Quarter
that New York had to show to a
stranger. Even back In the years
when all publication offices were far
downtown, and lower broadway was
still residential, and the new Fifth
avenue did not extend beyond Twelfth
street, the Square was a favorite
: haunt Of men and women of letters.
/ The late Amelia Barr, at the be-
7 ginning of her career as an author,
in order to be conveniently near the
old Aston Library in Lafayette place,
established herself and her children
In an apartment in a street just to the
south of Washington Square, She did
not know at the time that the apart
ment was one that many years before
had housed the gifted but always
financially unfortunate Edgar Allan
Poe. 1t was Poe's last New York
residence. There Lowell once visited
him and found him mot himself that
w. h.
In the Case of NJ. Valdemar" and THE
Philosophy of Composition" and The
LAterati of New York" which caused
stir comparable to the stir caused by
Byron's English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers" or Robert Buchanap's
The F1eshly School of Literature"
In fact, in the neighborhood of the
Square were an of Poe's New York
homes, with the exception of the one
overlooking the Hudson from what is
now Ejghty-fourth street, and the
Fordham Cottage where Virginia, the
child wife, died and from which he
went forth, already in the shadow OF
his own tragic end.
Where Poe Read "The Raven.o
About the Square are other Poe as
Scciations than those involving exist
ing or demolished structures in which
the poet actually lived. On Waverley
place was the home of Anne Lynch
who afterward became Mrs Botta, and
who wrote THE Battle of Life" 1t
was literary salon of its day. and
to 1t Poe. a shy lion, was invited TO
- read the newly published -"Fhe
m md nk.ah l h.,
and criticised by the more affluent
and conventional members ot the
writing fraternity. Others who fire.
queRted the salon We're Bayard Tay-
Tor and Taylor's friend Caroline Kirk
land, and Margaret Fuller and Lydia
Child and Ann 8. Stephens, who wrote
"Fashion and Famine" and Mary
Derwent," and young Richard Henry
Stoddard and Elizabeth Barstew, who
became his wife.
Bayard Taylor lived In a house fac
ing the Square at the point where
Waverley place joins Macdougal
street. There he wrote '"The Epistle
From Mount Tholus" and some of the
Poems OF the Orient" Subsequently
the house was torn down and on the
site was erected the apartment dwell
inG In which George Parsons Lathrop
penned some Of the verse of his days
and Dreams" while his wife, Nathan
lei Hawthorne's daughter, composed
parts of along the Shore" Almost
within the memory OF the present
generation is the old University
Building that faced the Square from
the eastern side. There, Just before
90 - nl.Ntl NlNnn
iore Winthrop wrote "John Brent
and Cecil Dreeme," the latter one Of
the most widely read books Of its day
and from there ne went in the blue
uniform of the Union army to meet
death at the Battle OF Big Bethel.
birthplace of Henry James.
At 81 Washington place, just on
the Square, Henry James was born
In his novel washington Square" he
left a picture of the neighborhood al
II was when he knew It in his boy
hood. Even then 1t had "a kind Of
established repose not OF frequent oe'
currence in other quarters OF tht
long, shrill city; a richer, ripper iool
than any of the upper ramificationi
of. the great longitudinal thorough
fare-the look of having had some
thing of a social history"
The actual house which Henr,
Janes had in mind, and which he de
- scribed with minute detail as the resi-
dence of DR.. SlopeH Ia on Waverle,
place, between Fifth avenue and Mac
dougal street. In 1895 when DR.
Sloper first took possession, movint
, uptown from the vicinity OF. the Cit,
, Hall, which socially had seen its BEES
. days, the Square, then the ideal o
quiet and genteel refinement, was
enclosed by n wooden paling. Tit
structure in which the Slopers Lives
and its neighbors were then supposed
TO einbody the last results of architec
tural science. IT was then and is to
day a modern house, wide fronte'
with a balcony before the drawing
/, room windows and a flight OF whit
/. marble steps ascending TO q porta
also faced with white marble. In tn
twenties Mrs. Sloper had been ION
of the pretty girls OF the small bu
promising capital which clusters
about the Battery and overlooked tn
bay, and OF which the uppermos
boundary was indicated by the grass,
waysides of Canal street"
From Henry James to O. Henry tn
novelists have found delight and sug
gestion In that line OF stately house
that stretches along the northern
-