5. Gowan’s Antiquarian Bookstore (97 Nassau Street)

Edgar Allan Poe-daguerreotype Photograph-Boroughs of the Dead-Greenwich Village-NYC
Edgar Allan Poe. Photo in Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Edgar Allan Poe was a contemporary and friend of Melville’s — they were introduced by a mutual editor. The place they had met was Gowan’s Antiquarian Bookstore, a now defunct dealer of “Historical Americana”. In a strange turn of events, Herman Melville had supposedly once bought an edition of Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy that had once belonged to his father’s library.