Community Architect Baltimore: March 2025

Architecture can be like poetry, but is the reverse also possible? Baltimore architect Davin Hong of re:vital Design is trying to do just that. His job: Design the Edgar Allen Poe Museum in Baltimore. More precisely, the expansion of the Poe House from the early 1800s which is listed as a National Register Landmark but hemmed in by the Poe Homes, Baltimore's first public housing development, built in 1940 for African American families. The complex of 288 homes is slated for demolition and redevelopment. In the process, additional land for a Poe Museum expansion has been carved out, also with the help of Hong, who in 2019 with his firm Living Design Lab, took part in a planning charrette that created basic redevelopment options.

Poe, a multi talent lived for four years on Amity Street
(Poe website)

In a tiny brick house on Baltimore’s North Amity Street in 1833-1835 Edgar Allan Poe wrote some of the early stories that would make him the father of the modern short story, and create and define the modern genres of mystery, horror and science fiction. (Poe Baltimore website)

Hong had time to develop his approach, the demolition of the Poe Homes has not yet started. Last week he presented the fruits of his translation of poetry into architectural form to the Baltimore design review panel UDAAP.

The challenge of translating the poetry of Poe into architecture originates with the fact that the Baltimore museum doesn't have a lot of objects to exhibit. These are mostly on display in Richmond's Poe museum located in Richmonds oldest building, the Old Stone House on East Main Street, a far more accessible location than the one in Baltimore. Boston, Richmond and Baltimore each claim some part of the poet who never stayed too long in one place. Baltimore has the advantage that Poe not only lived in the Poe House on Amity Street for four years but also died in this city, his grave next to Westminster Hall. Like Poe's life, his death and even his gravesite had its mishaps, mysteries and confusion.

The Poe Museum extension as seen from Lexington Street
(Re:vital Design)

Hong told the Baltimore Business Journal his vision is "a post-modern reading of Edgar Allan Poe's work through architecture that borrows from Poe's writings". Designing museums is an art that has come a long way from dusty shelves and static glass vitrines to today's interactive multi-media experiences allowing a lot of variation in how and what to communicate with a visitor.

“Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?” (Edgar Allen Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition”)

Hong, at heart a modernist, is unlikely to design in the gothic style, even if gothic is often used to describe Poe's writing style. In his presentation to Baltimore's design review panel UDAAP he describes his goals in prosaic terms, such as "creating a new space for operations, storytelling and exhibits", or "expand the museum's service to community and make the museum "a landmark destination in Baltimore City" In conversation it becomes clear, however, that Hong also sets on mystery, allusion and melancholy as themes, in part this becomes clear in accessories such as the cloudy, gloomy sky Hong selected for his renderings, in part in the architecture itself.

Overview sketch of the program elements (Re:vital Design)

An innovative architectural move is Hong's use of a double wall that acts like a longitudinal divide that bisects his composition and his program. He says that the wall creates a datum line that defines his Poe garden which mirrors a small park across the street that is part of the La Cite development across Amity Street and calls the wall a backdrop that hides the larger portion of the program, notably the auditorium. He also calls it a threshold, supposedly one from where one enters the combined two open spaces or from where one enters the lobby structure which he describes as an object within the open space. The other pieces of the assembled spaces in front of the wall consist of the historic Poe house, the structure next to the Poe home that will become an exhibit of the Poe Homes development, and a courtyard. Behind the wall are the gallery and an auditorium with an industrial style saw-tooth shed roof optimized for solar panels which he dubs "the Raven".

When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect—they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul—not of intellect, or of heart—upon which I have commented, and which is experienced in consequence of contemplating the “beautiful.” [....]
Beauty of whatever kind in its supreme development invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones. (Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition”)

The phantom house reimagines the original twin house with a
metal scrim (Re:vital Design)

An interesting move is Hong's "phantom house", in which he at the same time preserves the two story neighbor of the Poe House that dates back to the Poe Home development and also evokes the façade and roof of the "twin building" that mimics the lost half of what originally formed together with the Poe house a two story duplex. The phantom historical "ghosting" happens via a metal scrim floating in front of the brick building that will accommodate the Poe Homes exhibit. The scrim consists of words and letters of various sizes with punched out ghost windows symmetrical to those in et Poe Home.

Hong's Poe Garden plays with the composition and details of the cemetery next to Westminster Hall on Greene Street in subtle ways. There is no Poe "toaster" nor a tombstone, but the plant selections, the paving, the brick color and the play with letters casting shadows on the lobby wall are supposed to

The proposed Poe garden takes clues from the burial ground
at Westminster Hall (Re:vital Design)

instill a sense of melancholy. The garden leading to the courtyard could well be the entrance to all the museum elements, whereby the lobby would be entered from behind instead of the front. However, that is not what the architect intends. Instead he enters the lobby from West Lexington Street. The double wall has to traversed via a bridge if one wants to get from the lobby to the gallery or the auditorium, a glimpse of charred wood walls and possibly sinister shadows is supposed to be a bit spooky without being as crass as a carnival haunted fun house. The double wall accommodates also a stair to the basement in which Hong allows a departure from modernist cleanliness in favor of brick vaults and vaulted ceilings evoking catacombs. The effect is that it looks like as if the architect had placed his modern assembly of spaces on top of a historic excavation. The auditorium can double up as a community gathering space with ct access to a small outside patio.

The entirely windowless outside of the auditorium is clad in recycled plastic shingles that look like grey slate, another touch of autumn and gloom. Daylight comes from the shed roof.

Proposed auditorium (Re:vital Design)

Seen one by one Hong proves in each of the program components that he is a great designer with a firm grip on proportion and excellent placemaking skills. While the multitude of volumes, materials and styles certainly fosters "multiple readings" as the architects set out to achieve, and also reflects the many talents Edgar Allen Poe possessed, one has to wonder if there isn't too packed into this relatively small project. Given that the client is a non-profit that still has to raise funds for the construction of the project using Hong's drawings, and that the project is still far from a ground-breaking, one can expect that the one or the other idea will be purged towards more clarity, possibly resulting in a loss of mystery, ambiguity and poetry.

Klaus Philipsen, FAIA

Davin Hong's UDAAP presentation can be viewed here. All images below are from Re:vital Design.