The fall of the house of Edgar

More than 30 years ago, not long after I moved into an apartment on Carver Street, I was informed by a long-term resident of the street's Edgar Allan Poe connection. The address mentioned in your article as the likely location of Poe's birth, 62 Carver St., is consistent with what I was told.

It is important to note, though, that 62 Carver St. would not have been on the part of the street where the plaque is now, an "alley full of trucks servicing the state Transportation Building."

The only Carver Street addresses demolished for the Transportation Building were those at 12, 14, and 16 . I lived at No. 14 until 1978.

Any structure at 62 Carver would have been on the other side of Stuart Street, on the portion of Carver that was renamed -- in the mid-'70s , as I recall -- Charles Street South. That location, between a townhouse at 60 and the Milner Hotel at 78, is fenced and apparently being used as part of a parking lot. Yet it is not this location but the remaining piece of Carver Street, just off Boylston Street, that was briefly renamed Poe Way and is now marked with a commemorative plaque.

Given his reputed distaste for residents of Boston, what might Poe be inclined to say about the apparent mixup over the precise Boston location of his birth?

DAVID C. VAN HOY Dorchester