Last Saturday, my husband and I toured the Enoch Pratt House. Mr. Pratt was a wealthy Baltimore merchant and major benefactor of many Baltimore institutions, including the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore; the Sheppard Pratt Hospital; and, of course, the Enoch Pratt Free Library. He began to build a mansion for himself and his wife at Monument Street and Park Avenue in 1844. Coincidentally, this is the same year that the Maryland Historical Society was founded, an institution that years later would acquire the building for its collections. He later hired Edmund G. Lind, a prominent Baltimore architect, to add a fourth floor and marble portico. The portico had been commissioned by the Clerk of the United States House of Representatives for a mansion in Washington that he ultimately could not afford to build, and Pratt gladly took it off the designers’ hands and attached it to his Monument Street residence. Pratt spared no expense on the interior which includes a double parlor with soaring windows opening onto cast-iron balconies, marble fireplaces and elaborate plaster ceilings Pratt died in 1896 without any children. He was survived by his wife, who remained in the house until her death in 1911. Soon thereafter, Mary Ann (Washington) Keyser purchased the building for use by the Maryland Historical Society, which has owned the building since 1919. Although the house was used for many years by the Maryland Historical Society as administrative offices, they moved out several years ago, and the house remains empty and open to the public only on special occasions.