Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum in Baltimore, poses next to items left at the original grave site of author Edgar Allan Poe on Saturday. Poe's 200th birthday will be feted at parties this month in five cities that claim ties to the author, including Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston.ASSOCIATEDPRESS

PHILADELPHIA — Edgar Allan Poe, master of the horror tale, inventor of the modern detective story and a pioneer in the field of science fiction, was also during his life an example of another literary category: the starving artist.

But as the 200th anniversary of his birth approaches, cities up and down the East Coast where the writer struggled to make a living throughout his four decades are vying for pre-eminence in having shaped his literary legacy.

Philadelphia is taking steps to burnish its claim and this weekend opened a renovated museum house where Poe lived. An exhibit of Poe letters, early editions and images is on offer at the Free Library. And last week, a standing-room crowd gathered at the library to hear Poe mavens from Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston argue the merits of their respective cities in what was billed as "The Great Poe Debate."

"Philadelphia was the crucible for Poe's imaginative genius," Philadelphia-area critic Ed Pettit said. "The six years he spent living here were the most productive and successful of his writing career. Poe became a great writer while living in Philadelphia."

During his time in Philadelphia, Poe produced such classic horror tales as "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Pit and the Pendulum" as well as "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which has been credited with creating the modern detective story.

Just north of the city center stands a three-story brick house in which Poe lived for part of his six-year residence in Philadelphia from 1838 to 1844. Declared a National Historic Site, it reopened this weekend in time for the bicentennial of Poe's birth Monday.

"This was a brand-new suburban development with all the amenities — piped-in water and gas and a farmer's market out on Spring Garden Street," said Mary Jenkins, interpretive program specialist for the National Park Service, which administers the house.

Historic timelines and interactive exhibits have been added to the three-building complex, where visitors can hear Poe's works read and view a film on the author. A large image of Poe has compartments that open to show, for example, a "tell-tale heart."

Upstairs, the bare rooms have been left unfurnished, because there is little evidence of what they looked like, but drawings on the cracked plaster walls give a sense of what might have filled them. One renders the view from the window overlooking the small garden and cobbled street.

While in Philadelphia, Poe worked for literary magazines and tried unsuccessfully to found his own, gave lectures on poetry and wrote criticism.

"People loved to read him because he was very vitriolic," Jenkins said. "That didn't make him a lot of friends."

To mark the 200th anniversary of Poe's birth, events are planned not only in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston, but also in New York and Richmond, Va., where Poe also lived.

The competing claims have given rise to the "Poe wars," a lighthearted debate on the subject. Pettit opened the topic with a tongue-in-cheek suggestion in 2007 that Poe's remains in Baltimore be dug up and spirited off to more deserving Philadelphia — an idea he emphasized by bringing a shovel to Tuesday night's mock debate.

At the event, Jeff Jerome, longtime curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum in Baltimore — which has Poe's grave as well as the Ravens — cited Baltimore's long tradition of honoring the writer. He points out that hundreds, including Walt Whitman, attended the 1875 dedication of a new grave for Poe in that city.