The cottage in New York City, where writer Edgar Allan Poe lived his last years, is slated for a major renovation and will be closed for a year.

"This is going to be the first complete restoration," Abigail Lootens, director of communications for the Historic House Trust, announced over the weekend.

Poe Cottage, located in the Bronx, will be shut down in the spring of 2009 to undergo about $250,000 worth of renovations. In addition, a $4.2 million visitor centre will be erected.

Lootens says the restoration will give visitors to the small five-room building a better sense of Poe's final years.

The city's Parks Department Commissioner Adrian Benepe says the centre has been designed to evoke Poe's famous poem The Raven — the roof is an upraised V shape and gray shingles will be used on the outside walls, mimicking a bird's feathers.

Poe and his wife moved to the cottage in 1846 — at the time, it was far from the city — in hopes the fresh air that it would help with her tuberculosis. Sadly, it didn't and she died there in 1847.

Poe wrote some of his classic works there such as Annabel Lee and The Bells. He remained there after his wife's death, but died on a trip to Baltimore in 1849.

Managed by the Bronx Historical Society, Poe Cottage was moved to its current site in 1913, across the street from its original locale.

With files from the Associated Press