You
Very very dreadfully nervous I had been and I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him
But once conceived it haunted me days and night
My name is Kathy Anklam. I'm the education events coordinator here at the Egger Allen Poe Museum
The museum opened in 1922
It was owned by the Poe Foundation and it started just as the garden that you see in the shrine
Shortly after that the old stone house was added as the collection grew
The Poe Museum is something different when we have visitors come to town. They've seen art museums before they've seen history museum
But we have the world's largest collection of Edgar Allen Poe artifacts and their ability
This is something people come from around the world to see they see things from his boyhood homes like his bed and
pieces of furniture and the paintings he would have seen on the walls and
The china and glass where his family would have used and they get a sense of what it was like being here
Almost 200 years ago growing up in Richmond
What is the difference between the Poe that everyone knows and the Poe that actually existed is actually really really interesting
A lot of people think he's the character in his stories
People are really attracted to the freak side of Poe, the monster side. When people come to the Poe Museum
They see there's more than just a writer of scary stories more than just a poet who wrote the Raven
He's actually an amateur scientist that he proposed an early version of the Big Bang Theory that he invented the detective story
It was one of the pioneers of science fiction
And they see they even had an interest in seashells or the textbook on seashells. Oh, he was much more of a three-dimensional character
He wasn't just kind of crazy, you know the brooding artist
His obituary was written by someone who hated him named Rufus Griswold. His bedroom was about hoping an alcoholic being a womanizer being a jerk and being
Arrogant and using opium and all these horrible slanders and Poe had no way of defending himself
Griswold had done this in order for people not to want to read Poe's works to kind of separate him from the literary world
And it is the exact opposite. People could relate to Poe. He wasn't perfect
They liked the fact that he had this intrigue about him and so it actually encouraged people to read his writing even more
He thought that writing didn't have to teach anything didn't have to edify him
Didn't have to make you a better person
That's what separated him from some of the other poets of his time period
He thought that writing should exist for its own sake. He called it the poem for the poem's sake and
This was a revolutionary idea in this time and he got a lot of criticism for that
He was the father of detective fiction which a lot of people don't know. People usually attribute that to Arthur Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes
He really started
This new type of writing where you get to solve murders and the murder would happen at the beginning of the story and so at the end
So you know like Lawn Order would be around today
Okay, so Boston, Massachusetts and Baltimore, Maryland always claim Poe
But what does Richmond have to claim that they don't? Well, we have in his own handwriting
Poe stating I am a Virginian and Richmond is my home
The settings of like the whole Maldavia that he lived in here in Richmond definitely inspired some of the settings in his stories
Like fall the house of usher. He's setting these very rich surroundings for the reader to kind of experience and
He wouldn't have understood these things. He wouldn't have known about them in such great detail
Had he not had the experience of living in the surroundings himself when he's writing these stories. He was living in
cramped tenements and cottages and he was writing about these things from memory even the
home the Raven described his nice library
Scholar sitting and he's looking over books for God and war
Poe's describing things from his childhood. Do I feel that Poe's legacy is alive in my own Richmond?
Yeah, I would have to answer that a definite yes. We have very large art community
here in Richmond and we get a lot of young people coming to the museum. We get lots of young people who are inspired by this
It's so detailed in this story
So I mean everything comes alive in your head and it has inspired other writers other artists for years
Which one's a little quirky or a little odd or a little offbeat, but so was Poe and I think they really relate to that
It's a pretty incredible human being and very important to American culture and we just would like people to come out and hear about it.
My name is E. L. Butterworth. I'm a long-time certified guide here in the city working for the Ballantine History Center
It's Chaco Hill Chaco slip Chaco area is one of my
Really really important interests
The earliest days of the city with the little village was laid out the old Richmond town
Starting at what now is 17th Street was ridgy 1st Street Chaco bottom was
Principal industrial area for Richmond as Richmond grew to become the largest industrial city in the Annabelle himself
Some people say that Chaco actually refers to this last
Seven miles here in the city limits of these rapids
Well circumventing these these rapids which became a major power source of course with the harnessing of them of these rapids with
Diversion dams and millraces
The canal system was developed the canal system was the first canal system actually in the country
Never did get to its full potential as it was as it was really conceived to do
But when as far as 185 miles up as far as the can of Virginia with some 92 locks and solutions
the the canal system also was important in terms of developing a
Broad transportation to the West and bringing back from the West
Tobacco in the early on and later on wheat from the breadbasket of the region the Chandoa Valley
The railroad in did not come to Richmond as fast as did in some other areas
The railroad in Richmond did become a railroad center and right here at Chaco bottom
Where the principal location of two main rail terminals
Particularly during the Civil War when five rail lines came into the city
We've always since that time been a rail center here and the focus point always was right here in downtown in the industrial area
Chaco
Saw so much of the early development of the city some of the oldest homes are in the valley of course and
It's slowly as the city moved to the west to get above the flood plain so did the commercial area of the city
What remained in Chaco?
Valley in Chaco bottom for a very long time primarily was the tobacco industry
We'll now call tobacco row, which is a very important part of our our city today
And as that all these old industrial buildings have now been converted into a living space and it's in it's pretty quite significant
now the slip actually
Began to transform from what it was in terms of an industrial neighborhood into a more historic section in the late
60s and early 70s when the major tobacco companies that occupied these old buildings here said we're out of here now
We need more room and they moved down the river
So everything was left here. What do we do with it was a question
Well, what we do with it is we kind of use it for the best way we can and pretty soon
We had restaurants coming in and Chaco slip and it's very early as days of modern development began in the early 1970s
Today in the whole River District
There's probably around a hundred places that you can actually get something to eat and the River District has been for some time now
The fastest growing
Census track in the city with the influx of young professionals coming in a bio medical industry is very strong here
Biotechnology Village as well as young professional morning to be closer in to the financial center here
We say quite we say quite honestly really that Richmond has 400 years of history
Like no other city in the country and it's been
Participated in a best about every event that's taking place in this country in terms of the growth of this little
Urban frontier which we had up and down this with this ledge called a fall line
The Chaco is bottom and Chaco slip have seen just about everything in the history of Richmond
It all started here and it continues to move forward here
Hello, my name is Shannon Christian and I'm here at the 17th Street farmers market and I'm here with George Balos manager of the 17th Street farmers market
For those who are unfamiliar. What are the pros the shopping here?
Well, the pros are that you get to buy
delicious fresh local fruits and vegetables that are grown by the farmers themselves
It's really for me probably the most rewarding thing that I do is meeting the actual grower and to be able to
Take a first-hand look and to be able to taste and see what that person's produced
Do they reflect Richmond as a whole? Are there people from many different places that are vendors here?
They certainly reflect Richmonders
To we have two permanent vendors that are on the corners on each of the corners of the market
They've actually been here for four generations
Their families have been here for over 100 years. It's a very collecting mix of people
Which makes the the market fascinating in terms of its products and services that we offer
Well, the market as you said was established in 1737 and it was the very first legal street for the city of Richmond
the city of Richmond's founding fathers needed to
dedicate a legal street or a legal area
to be able to support commerce to bring in food and trade and goods into the city of Richmond and
Been training the years of 1820 and 1860
as we well know slavery was a major industry in Virginia and
The market was the second largest slave trade auction house
Other than in New Orleans in the United States during the Civil War
Farmers market was used as a what's now almost a modern mash unit. They would bring the soldiers in they would
use it for
Convalescence and to prepare them to either go back to battle or to go home the end of the Civil War
It was used by the Union soldiers and the Union soldiers bidwack
And slept at the the farmers market. So it was used by both the Confederate and the Union soldiers
The farmers especially from Eastern Henrico from Hanover and from Chesterfield used to bring in the vegetables by cart
This is a long 17th Street, and it was very basic
they would bring the carts in and quite literally drop the vegetables or to drop the meats or poultry's onto the street and
They would there were many of them were criers. They would cry out to
bring people and attract people in and if you walk through our market and you're able to close your eyes and listen you'll hear the voices of
People calling out for the vegetables for venison, you know people that
200 years ago would rather than going to a u-crops or a food line would come down
To the market and historically by their their fresh fruits and vegetables
The future itself is still uncertain
What I would like to do or envision doing is to being able to open adjacent to our
Market or open market a year-round enclosed market that's very similar to some of the famous markets in and around the country
We would be able to form an incubator and a business incubator for food related or food oriented businesses
If you look at some of the some of the greatest marketable
Products that have come out in the United States in the last 25 years a vast majority of them were started in farmers markets
So really what we're looking for is that signature product and signature dish that we can try to
Find that's incubated out of our Richmond market that would become synonymous with Richmond
And I know that products out there. So as an intermediary what I would like to do is to form a
Incubator that has a kitchen area that can be shared by other minority business enterprise
entrepreneurs and to teach the
Businesses about how to write a business plan and to be able to get some money in the bank and for me selfishly
I want them to sell it on the market
So I create my own economy on onto the market and in two to three years when they're ready to separate
They now have finished product that they know how to make on a large-scale basis. They have an accounting
Record of the sales that they made they've established a client base
And then they can go to a bank and stand a real chance of fighting chances being able to get a small business loan
So for us that's gonna be hopefully the future of our market
