Designs of Yesterday: A Closer Look at the Dorm Room of Edgar Allan Poe

Back-to-school season often means grumblings about all things scholastic. If you know someone who’s heading off to college this fall for the first time and is unhappy about the shabby amenities offered in their university’s dorm, have them take a peek at this sparsely furnished domicile of one collegiate Edgar Allan Poe during his time at the University of Virginia. Their tight quarters probably don’t seem so bad now, do they! Marvin Gardens is always interested in taking a closer look at the variations in design from both yesterday and today and after seeing this room, we’d have to conclude that the dorm rooms of today aren’t half bad at all!

Over 100 years ago, the president of the university assigned the upkeep of the poet’s dorm to the Raven Society, which is named after Poe’s most famous work and recognizes academic excellence. The room has undergone renovation twice and requires periodic cleaning — the window looking into the dorm frequently has smudges from students trying to sneak a peak.

Photo Credit: The University of Virgina Magazine via Apartment Therapy

A Closer Look at Sister Parish

Did you know that many of the eccentrically traditional rooms that you see in magazines and around showrooms today have been influenced by American interior decorator and socialite Sister Parish? The New Jersey-born design partner of Albert Hadley, was first brought in to decorate the Kennedy White House in 1962 and has become known for her homey, cluttered traditionalism, her passion for patchwork quilts, painted furniture, and red-lacquer secretaries. Her stylistic influences can still be seen at the White House today, particularly in the Family Dining Room and Yellow Oval Room.

“It is only my eye that has helped me. I am still hopeless with that thing called a scale ruler. I love color, but that comes very naturally to me. From the beginning, I never followed trends. If I was aware of them, I didn’t care, for I believed as I do now, that rooms should be timeless and very personal. And I certainly don’t have a “look”-just a mishmash of everything that somehow, by instinct, usually turns out to be a warm, imaginative, ‘living room’.

-Sister Parish

Photo Credit: Sister Parish Design-a design essential

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