3. Write Poetry at the Raven Mantle

In 2012, Untapped Cities writer Benjamin Waldman discovered a long-hidden treasure: the mantlepiece next to which Edgar Allan Poe wrote his seminal poem, “The Raven.” Presented as a gift to Columbia on January 4th, 1908, the mantle was soon forgotten and lost to public knowledge. Columbia’s archives are unclear about where it was kept over the next forty-0dd years: some report that it was in Philosophy Hall, while others state it was kept in Low Library. Eventually, it ended up in a storage area in Butler Library, its black paint chipping, mostly unknown.

Though it was physically lost, its legacy lived on in words. The poem mentions the fireplace in the line “each separate dying ember / Wrought its ghost upon the floor.” When Columbia received the mantle, then-president Nicholas Murray Butler promised that the mantle would be preserved and displayed in a prominent place—but the distortions of time led to the mantle’s relegation to the shadows of Butler Library. Since being discovered, it has been moved to a more easily accessible location in Butler’s Rare Books and Manuscript Library, and can be found there today.