Edgar Allan Poe Goes Coastal
Edgar Allan Poe Goes Coastal
On Sullivan’s Island, Poe’s Tavern trades the expected gloom for cold beer, good burgers, and a version of Edgar Allan Poe shaped by sand, salt air, and a less familiar chapter of his life.
Edgar Allan Poe rarely gets to be cheerful.
His likeness tends to arrive surrounded by ravens, candlelight, crumbling walls, and some suggestion that things are about to go terribly wrong. At Poe’s Tavern on Sullivan’s Island, however, the famously melancholy writer finds himself in brighter company.
Bob Ross paints happy little trees on one television while “Islands in the Stream” gives way to Weezer. Burgers travel up and down the bar, appearing to be the unofficial order of the room. That reputation extends well beyond the island, with the tavern appearing in multiple national and regional best-burger roundups highlighted on its press page. Surfboards, photographs, and Poe memorabilia fill the walls, but the mood is more beach tavern than Gothic shrine. Even the shaded porch seems to insist that this is no place for brooding.
The original tavern opened in a circa-1920 cottage on Sullivan’s Island in 2003, and the concept has since expanded to Atlantic Beach, Florida, Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia.
The Poe connection is not simply a clever name. As a young man, years before “The Raven” made him inseparable from the macabre, Poe enlisted in the United States Army under the name Edgar A. Perry. He was stationed at Fort Moultrie, just down the street, from late 1827 into 1828.
Sullivan’s Island later became the setting for “The Gold-Bug,” Poe’s tale of a mysterious cipher, buried treasure, and coastal adventure. The island in that story is not dark in the familiar Poe sense. It is sandy, wild, isolated, and shaped by the possibility that something extraordinary might be hidden just beyond sight.
Poe’s Tavern reflects more of that writer.
The literary references are everywhere. Burgers carry names pulled from his stories and poems, allowing the tavern to have fun with the mythology without becoming trapped inside it.
That may be the most fitting tribute of all. Sullivan’s Island does not ignore Poe’s darkness. It simply remembers that there was more to him than ravens and premature burials. He was also a young soldier who knew this stretch of coast, walked near the fort, and carried its landscape into his work.
At Poe’s Tavern, the writer is still watching from the walls. For once, though, he appears to be getting a little sun.
Plan a Visit
Poe’s Tavern
2210 Middle St.
Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482
(843) 883-0083
poestavern.com
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