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Expanding the American Intellect: Icons and Iconoclasts
Mount Vernon Cultural Walk
"My library," Enoch Pratt said, "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." In 1886, with the opening of the central library and four branch libraries, the Enoch Pratt Free Library became the first citywide library system in the country.
The Pratt Library cares for the papers of Baltimore's greatest literary figure H.L. Mencken (1880-1956). As an icon and iconoclast of the modernist movement, Mencken pioneered realism In fiction, promoted writers (Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Theodore Dreiser, Joseph Conrad and others), and edited two literary magazines, Smart Set and American Mercury, which directly influenced literature worldwide.
Other writers called Baltimore home. Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) based his groundbreaking economic tome, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), on observations of Baltimore culture. John Dos Passos (1896-1970) spent 17 years in Baltimore and wrote voluminously at Johns Hopkins University, the Pratt and George Peabody libraries. Upton Sinclair (1878-1968), the author of The Jungle (1906), was born at 417 North Charles Street and lived much of his youth in Baltimore.
Another social reformer and Mount Vernon resident, Charles J. Bonaparte (1851-1921), grand nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, became President Theodore Roosevelt's Attorney General. In 1906, he led landmark antitrust investigations against Standard Oil, Union Pacific Railroad, and the American Tobacco Company. He created the Bureau of Investigation, the precursor to the FBI, and advocated and achieved many progressive social reforms in Baltimore and the nation.
Front facade of the Central Enoch Pratt Free Library built on Mulberry Street in 1886. The building was demolished in the early 30s to make way for the current library building.
The main reading room of the original Pratt Free Library. Pratt's philanthropic activities impressed Andrew Carnegie so much he declared "Pratt was my pioneer."
Robert Goodloe Harper (1765-1825), a lawyer, U.S. Senator,. and Vice Presidential candidate, lived in this house, located directly across the street from the cathedral. Harper was also a leader in the Liberia movement, a controversial movement to help free African Americans colonize the west coast of Africa.
Enoch Pratt (1808-1896) moved to Baltimore in 1831 and began a wholesale hardware business. He invested heavily in coal mines and iron foundries, became very wealthy, and donated large sums for the benefit of Baltimore and North Middleborough, Massachusetts, his hometown. He funded the building of the Workingmen's Institute and Library in Canton, the Enoch Pratt Free Library system in Baltimore and the Sheppard Asylum (Now Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital.)
Town houses that stood directly across the street from the cathedral's main entrance were demolished in the 1930s to make way for the current Enoch Pratt Free Library Building. Some of Baltimore's wealthiest citizens, including doctors, lawyers, merchants, senators and mayors, lived across the street from the cathedral where Pratt now stands.
Charles J. Bonaparte continuously fought for the rights of African Americans. While he was Attorney General, he expressed his underlying beliefs about race relations in America, "Every race of people is driven to the woods or die out that comes in contact with the Caucasian race. The Negro race is the only one race on the globe that has lived, thriven, flourished and multiplied by the side of the Caucasian race. This one fact bespeaks volumes in the Negro's favor, and no eloquence can be stronger than that single fad to prove the Negro's greatness."
John Widgeon (1850-1937), an African American, worked for the Maryland Academy of Science, located on Mulberry, from 1870 to the early 1930s. Although Widgeon was hired as a janitor, he assumed the responsibilities of collecting, classifying and exhibiting many artifacts from the Academy's natural history collection. He died in 1937 after receiving an honorary Masters of Science degree from the Academy. |