Edgar Allan Poe has a double in South Philly
I really thought this was Edgar Allan Poe. Photo by Jim Murphy, author of Real Philly History, Real Fast.
While walking by 9th and Fitzwater Street in South Philadelphia one day, I noticed this colorful artwork on a brick wall.
I wondered if it were Edgar Allan Poe … because of the unique mustache. But when I asked about the painting inside the Burke & Payne barber shop there, no one seemed to know. They just wondered what I was taking a photo of. A patron in the shop, though, believed it was an image from an old barber ointment.
So I reached out to Ralph Marano, a fellow tour guide who does historical tours of the Bella Vista area, and asked if he had ever noticed or research the image.
Not only did Ralph remember the drawing, he turned out to be far better at searching graphic images online than I am.
When I met him for coffee the next day, he had already printed out the image for me. It is from Pinaud Clubman After Shave Lotion. Over 200 years old, the company includes beard oil and mustache wax among its products.
That’s probably why the image looks to me so much like Edgar Allan Poe. See his photo below.
Daguerrotype of Edgar Allan Poe. From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository. Taken by W.S. Hartshorn, Providence, RI, November 9, 1848. Photograph taken in 1904 by C.T. Tatman. Note: The Library of Congress image is from a copy of a copy; the original has been missing since 1860; see Michael J. Deas, The Portraits and Photographs of Edgar Allan Poe, University Press of Virginia, 1988, p. 40.
