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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." |