The Canton Branch is one of four branch libraries, all designed by local architect Charles L. Carson, built by the Enoch Pratt Free Library in 1886. It stands alone, however, as the first to open and the only one of the original branch locations…

Constructed of tooled Indiana limestone, glass, steel, concrete, and granite, the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery is at the center of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus both literally and figuratively. Since the library first…

Since 1951, the Edmondson Village Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library at the corner of Edmondson Avenue and Woodridge Road has served as a treasured community institution for nearby residents and readers. The building's Colonial Revival…

Heralded as "the greatest writer of our time" by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, John Dos Passos spent time in and out of Baltimore from his birth in 1896 and lived here from 1950 until his death in 1970. An acclaimed biographer and novelist,…

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Karl Shapiro was a true Baltimorean. As a young man in the 1920s and 1930s, Shapiro fed his literary ambitions with the city's rich cultural history; for instance, writing love poems at Fort McHenry where Francis…

In January 1799, the Maryland Legislature approved a petition for a charter to incorporate a society of physicians in Maryland to be known as the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of the State of Maryland. As written, this special act of the Maryland…

Established in 1857, the Peabody Institute is the second-oldest conservatory in the United States and a landmark at the southeast corner of the Washington Monument. Born in 1795 in Massachusetts, George Peabody lived briefly in Washington, DC,…

"My library shall be for all, rich and poor without distinction of race or color, who, when properly accredited, can take out the books if they will handle them carefully and return them." These were the words of Enoch Pratt in 1882 when he gave a…