Curator Jeff Jerome, pictured at Edgar Allan Poe’s grave in downtown Baltimore, has dedicated his life to preserving the memories of Poe and writer H.L. Mencken. Photo courtesy of Jeff Jerome

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Jeff Jerome did not enter the Baltimore catacombs as an Edgar Allan Poe scholar. He entered with a camera.

When Baltimore Mayor William Donald Schaefer needed a photograph of the tunnels beneath Westminster Church, Poe’s final resting place, Jerome, a young photographer and tour guide, was there.

But when Jerome stepped into that shadowy underground world not far from Camden Yards in 1976, something happened. With a shiver, he suddenly knew that he was meant to become part of the Poe story.

“I took one good picture, and an unknown door opened,” he said.

In 1978, Jerome became curator of Baltimore’s Edgar Allan Poe House. Nearly half a century later, he is its curator emeritus and an authority on Baltimore’s most mysterious literary resident. Along the way, he helped turn a small West Baltimore rowhouse into a destination for Poe admirers from around the world.

Today, as a member of the board of the Society for the Preservation of H.L. Mencken’s Legacy, Jerome is once again helping to preserve the memory of one of the city’s great writers.

A serendipitous path

Jerome grew up in a Highlandtown rowhouse surrounded by friends. He and his two brothers attended William Paca Elementary School.

As a child, he loved the campy horror and science-fiction movies of the 1950s, particularly Saturday Shock Theatre. The Wolf Man and Frankenstein shared space in his imagination with Roger Corman, Ray Harryhausen and Vincent Price.

“Thank you to my parents for letting me watch these scary shows that sparked my imagination and ignited my interest,” Jerome said.

Jerome was more than a monster-movie kid; he was a good student with an interest in history.

“My holy grail of books was about Greece, Rome, Egypt — to the point where I became a minor expert on hieroglyphics,” he said, adding that he had been mesmerized by Ben-Hur.

He attempted to read the encyclopedia from A to Z; already, a meticulous curator was lurking inside the curious boy.

Jerome attended Baltimore City College, requiring a three-bus trip to school. He remembers being somewhat of a clown until a teacher supplied a piece of career counseling unlikely to appear in any manual: “There is no job market for a**holes.”

Slowly the wisecracker evolved into a scholar.

Years later, in one of those “Smalltimore” coincidences Baltimore seems to specialize in, Jerome encountered the teacher again at a gathering at the Poe House. Jerome thanked him for “keeping me off the street corner.”

But another lesson imprinted itself.

“This teacher talked to me like an adult even though I was a thoughtless teenager,” Jerome said. “And that is how I talk to all ages as I give tours or lectures.”

Early work ethic

Jerome found his own path, outside traditional academics. Life in Baltimore was an education of its own.

At age 13, he helped his mother in the pet department at Hochschild Kohn on Lexington Street.

“This is where I developed my philosophy of work,” he said. “Nowhere else did I learn more about the world than in retail, and I loved it.”

At 16, he acquired a work permit and a camera and told his parents he wanted to be a photographer. He eventually found work at a food-industry trade newspaper, honing an attention to detail that would later serve him well in museum work.

His real-world education was assembling itself: retail taught him about people; photography taught him to look; newspapers taught him to tell stories. Then fate stepped in.

The mayor’s request for a picture connected Jerome with Poe in the public’s mind. Soon after, someone asked Jerome to write a job description for curator of the Poe Museum. He wrote one that, as it happened, fit himself rather well.

Through his connection with Poe, Jerome met one of his childhood heroes. In 1977, he escorted Vincent Price through Baltimore, including the catacombs beneath Poe’s grave. At one point, the great horror actor grabbed Jerome’s arm.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Price told him.

‘Do it right’

The following year, Jerome became official curator of the Poe House, a deteriorating brick rowhouse on Amity Street in West Baltimore. Jerome understood that preservation alone wouldn’t bring visitors. So he decided to change the stereotype of the sleepy historical tour.

“When someone said, ‘Well, that’s the way we’ve always done it,’ I said, ‘No! Greet the people energetically. Do it right!’”

Jerome dug deeply into Poe research and discovered that the popular image of the author bore only a passing resemblance to the real man. Poe was routinely portrayed as a drug addict, a destitute madman and a figure nearly as macabre as one in his own stories.

Jerome wanted visitors to know the more complicated human being behind the mythology. With a mission to correct those misconceptions, he became, in a sense, a keeper of Poe’s reputation.

As Poe’s international following grew, so did Jerome’s circle. Soon Jerome wasn’t simply telling people Poe’s history. In his way, he was making them part of it.

Mystery of the Poe Toaster

One way Jerome has kept Poe’s memory alive was through the annual celebration of the writer’s January birthday.

“Many cities like to claim Poe as theirs, but only Baltimore can celebrate his birthday at his grave in the haunting environment of the catacombs,” he said.

Not every mystery benefits from having the lights turned on. That was the case with the legendary Poe Toaster.

From the 1930s until 2009, an unidentified figure had visited Poe’s grave around the writer’s January 19 birthday, leaving red roses and cognac. Jerome, who often appeared on television to discuss the annual vigil, understood that its power depended upon what nobody knew. Each year he protected the Toaster’s secrecy.

“The facts should be accurate. The mystery could remain mysterious,” he said.

Moving on

Museum work taught Jerome how to navigate bureaucracy. After decades at the Poe House, in 2013 he knew it was time to turn his attention to another Baltimore literary landmark.

“You have to flow with the tempo of the times,” he said.

The H.L. Mencken House on Hollins Street, overlooking the writer’s beloved Union Square, offered Jerome another Baltimore story worth telling. Closed to the public for 23 years, the historic house reopened in 2020.

Today Jerome serves on the board of the Society for the Preservation of H.L. Mencken’s Legacy, bringing to the effort the unusual collection of skills he developed during his decades at the Poe House: research, promotion, preservation, storytelling and event planning.

Surprisingly, event planning may be Jerome’s superpower. He loves it. He is good at it. And, characteristically, he digs into every detail.

In the beautifully restored Mencken House, Jerome is once again in his element. He revels in making other people fall in love with historical figures.

H.L. Mencken, the writer known as The Sage of Baltimore, built a national reputation on skepticism, satire and a willingness to puncture pretensions.

But beneath the acid wit, Mencken was a private romantic who wrote tender love letters to his wife and, after her death, sealed them away in grief.

Personal history

Jerome spent a career deciding which pieces of the past mattered, which stories were true, and which artifacts could help the next generation understand what came before them. He preserved Poe while stripping away false mythology. He helps preserve Mencken while revealing the man behind the public reputation.

Now history has become personal. A recent widower, Jerome now finds himself going through his late wife’s belongings, deciding what should remain and what must be released.

The meticulous curator insists upon facts. The entertainer knows facts need a good story. The historian understands that not all the past can be saved. And the romantic wants to hold on.

Having spent much of his life preserving houses, objects, stories and memories, Jerome said the task forces him to ask himself “what to keep and what to let go of when everything tells a story you want to remember?”

Perhaps there is no curator’s handbook for that.