A free, two-day festival this fall will help inaugurate the redevelopment of the Poppleton neighborhood where Edgar Allan Poe once lived.

Poe Baltimore, in partnership with La Cité Development, will host the first International Edgar Allan Poe Festival and Awards on Oct. 6-7, according to a news release.

The event will be held in Poe Park in Center West, a new housing development in the neighborhood. The apartments were developed by La Cité Development and another New York firm, BRP Development Corp.

The slight brick home on Amity Street where Poe lived for two years nearly met the bulldozer in the 1930s, when the slum houses around it were cleared to make way for new homes. But a group of activists rallied to save the house, and it was turned into a museum. It now adjoins the Poe Homes public housing development.

Enrica Jang, director of the Poe House, said she’s optimistic the new development will bring more visitors to the Poe House, already a site of pilgrimage for lovers of the novelist she called the father of detective fiction and science fiction in the United States.

— Christina Tkacik