Library Branch Buildings Revisited
By Alyssa Stokes
5 Jun 2008
My relationship with Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library began in 2004 with my Community Arts Partnership placement in an after school arts program at the Walbrook branch. I found the branches were great sites for community arts and I loved the safe haven they created for many neighborhood children. After visiting and working at several branches in various areas of the city, I realized that they could serve as a systematic way to explore and familiarize myself with Baltimore neighborhoods.
As I researched and explored, I became most intrigued by the historic branch buildings. I also noticed many EPFL branch buildings that were no longer used as libraries, due to branch closings or relocations. Many of the original Pratt buildings now functioned as other types of community centers including churches, day cares, and political meeting places. I chose to research, visit, and photograph these original EPFL branch buildings as an investigation of Baltimore's changing architecture, public spaces, and neighborhoods.
In order to visit all the historic branches, I developed a very structured and systematic process, which gave me the opportunity to rediscover the city neighborhood by neighborhood. Each time I set out to photograph, I first consulted the historic library branch map created by the EPFL in 1937. I selected an area of the city and created groupings of approximately five branches for each trip. I then reviewed the historic images of the chosen branches. These images were used both as clues for locating the buildings, and as templates to follow as I photographed. By photographing from the same perspective as the historic images, I hoped to make it easier to see the changes that had occurred to the branch buildings over time.
