and ruined city, and the idea of a place besieged and suffering all the horrors of war is before us.39
This description and the picture (fig. 4) that appeared on the first page of the New-York Mirror a week after the fire remind the reader of Poe’s graphic descriptions of besieged cities and desolate environments. Could Poe have written it himself? Poe worked at the newspaper from October 1844 to February 1845, and either the write-up of the fire was his or the writer who wrote it (possibly N. P. Willis) was influenced by Poe’s earlier descriptions of urban disasters. Compare the Mirror’s description to this one from Poe’s short story “King Pest” (1835): “The paving-stones, loosened from their beds, lay in wild disorder amid the tall, rank grass, which sprang up around the feet and ankles. Fallen houses choked up the streets. The most fetid and poisonous smells everywhere prevailed;—and by the aid of that ghastly light which, even at midnight, never fails to emanate from a vapory and pestilential atmosphere, might be discerned lying in the by-paths and alleys, or rotting in the windowless habitations, the carcass of many a nocturnal plunderer arrested by the hand of the plague” (Tales, 1:243–44). Or compare this similarly bleak description from “Silence: A Fable” (1838): “And the tall primeval trees rock eternally hither and thither with a crashing and mighty sound. And from their high summits, one by one, drop everlasting dews. And at the roots strange poisonous flowers lie writhing in perturbed slumber. And overhead, with a rustling and loud noise, the gray clouds rush westwardly forever, until they roll, a cataract, over the fiery wall of the horizon” (1:195–96).
While lower Manhattan recovered from the fire’s destruction, the New York arts community, on the other hand, was reveling in its newfound prosperity. The visual arts attracted much attention during the two-year period Poe lived in Manhattan. Just after he arrived, the nineteenth annual show at the National Academy of Design opened on April 25, 1844; the number of visitors who saw the show before it closed in July was in the thousands.40 The 1844 show included about three hundred works of art by American artists, including Frederic Church, Thomas Cole, Thomas Doughty, Asher Durand, Francis Edmonds, Charles Loring Elliott, Henry Peters Gray, and Henry Inman.41 Since its founding in 1825, the National Academy of Design had gained more and more prominence with each passing year, and by the mid-1840s it was considered “the most influential of all serial exhibitions in this country.”42 In 1841, the Academy moved from its small quarters to “the Society Library building, at the corner of Broadway and Leonard Street. These galleries were larger and more commodious than any yet occupied by the society.”43 Patterned after the Royal Academy in London, the National Academy of Design exhibits were “limited to contemporary American art. . . . Exhibitions were planned and executed by contemporary artists for contemporary artists.”44 Works could only be shown once. The shows attracted viewers who wanted to see the newest work by their favorite artist and those who looked forward to the possibility of discovering a new artist whose work they could follow and support. Unlike the American Academy of Art founded in 1802, which was “primarily concerned with the promotion of civic virtue”45 and mostly exhibited work by European “masters,” the National Academy of Design was established by artists to promote American art and train American artists. By the mid-1840s, New York was considered the center of the arts, primarily because of the quality of the shows at the National Academy of Design.
In addition, in 1844, businessman and art patron Jonathan Sturges organized a group of patrons to establish the New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts, the city’s first gallery with a permanent collection. The inaugural exhibit consisted of paintings and drawings from Luman Reed’s collection, which included works by prominent contemporary artists such as George Whiting Flagg, Thomas Cole, and William Sidney Mount.46 Reed began collecting European art in the 1820s but turned to collecting works by American artists in the 1830s. He was one of New York’s most generous art patrons, and before his death in 1836 he opened his home at 13 Greenwich Street on a regular basis to those wishing to view his artwork. According to Abigail Gerdts, “Reed’s collection remained in his home [after his death] until 1844, when to the alarm of his friends and fellow patrons of the arts, it became known that the family intended to dispose of it.”47 This provided the impetus for the efforts by Sturges and his fellow patrons to establish the New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts and keep Reed’s collection intact.
The inaugural exhibit of the New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts was located in rented rooms at the New York Society Library, but soon thereafter, in March 1845, New York City’s Common Council voted to allow the gallery to use the Rotunda in the Park “to establish in the city of New-York a permanent gallery of paintings, statuary, and other works of art.”48 It prospered there until 1848, when the city reclaimed the building for another use and the collection was transferred to the New-York Historical Society: “The New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts . . . did propose to the said New-York Historical Society that if the said Society in the construction of their new fire proof Edifice then in progress of erection, would provide a suitable Gallery for the reception, safe keeping, and proper exhibition of the aforesaid collection of art, the said New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts would deposit the same in perpetuity. . . . The New-York Historical Society did cause, at great extra expense, change in the building to provide the Gallery.”49
An article describing the origin of the New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts, attributed by Burton Pollin to Henry Cood Watson,50 appears in the September 13, 1845, issue of the Broadway Journal. Watson generously commends the individuals who saw in the pending disposal of Reed’s collection “a favorable opportunity for founding a Public Gallery”: “Too much praise cannot be awarded to these true followers of the beautiful art; while many, and particularly the fashionable many, expend their so-called enthusiasm in wordy expletives and mawkish lamentation upon the fallen state of the Arts in this country, a few gentlemen honorably distinguished as New York merchants, step forward, and give the only substantial proof of their interest in Painters and the Painter’s Art.”51 This article is quite unlike the two columns written by Charles Briggs about the founding of the New-York Gallery of the Fine Arts in earlier issues of the Broadway Journal. In the March 1, 1845, issue, Briggs chastises the founders of the gallery for showing “bad pictures” (BJ, 1:134). He later expressed his disappointment in the founders for hanging copies alongside original works by American artists: “What we had hoped to see, when the New York gallery was first projected, was the foundation of a gallery of American Art; one that we could point to with pride. . . . Our country is so belittled by imitation and copyism, that we cannot but think that a collection of Original American works would have a beneficial effect in other departments, and lead to self-dependence in other things of seemingly greater importance than paintings and statues” (1:187). Neither of these sentiments is included in Watson’s overview of the founding of the gallery published months later when Briggs was no longer associated with the Broadway Journal.
During this same period, the American Art-Union’s lottery shows were thriving. Founded in 1839, the Art-Union was designed to popularize and promote the sale of contemporary American artwork:
Unlike the AUL [Art Union of London], which was created for both philosophical and practical reasons, the AAU [American Art-Union] was founded in 1839 primarily to create a gallery for new art in New York. . . . The AAU borrowed heavily from the AUL’s idealized rhetoric about the moral and social benefits of promoting taste among the broader population and of encouraging artistic production, but openly acknowledged that the form of its particular operations were driven largely by a dual commitment to its “Perpetual Free Gallery” (open free to members and at a nominal charge to non-members) and to the purchase of prizes by committee.52
By 1845, the gallery had 3,233 members, a significant increase from its original 814 members.53 In addition to this venue, many artists exhibited their work in “rooms at Broadway.”
Poe, like others in artistic circles, would have been caught up in the city’s