What Edgar's Cafe is known for

Named for Edgar Allan Poe, who lived nearby on West 84th Street in the 1840s. The Amsterdam Avenue café is the sole survivor after its original location closed in 2011.

Edgar's Cafe takes its name from Edgar Allan Poe, who lived on West 84th Street between March 1844 and August 1845 — a stretch of the block once informally known as Edgar Allan Poe Street. The café originally operated two locations at once: the primary shop at 255 West 84th Street and a second outpost on Amsterdam Avenue. The 84th Street original closed around 2011, reportedly a casualty of the lease, after roughly two decades in business.

The Amsterdam Avenue location survived and is now the only Edgar's left, carrying the Poe theme forward inside a gothic Italian-inspired room — high arched ceilings, dim lighting, a look that leans into the literary reference rather than treating it as a name only. It's a small, specific kind of neighborhood landmark: a café that outlived its own flagship and kept the theme intact, on a stretch of the Upper West Side where Poe himself once rented rooms.