H. L. Mencken House

Henry Louis Mencken, born in 1880, moved to this house with his parents in 1883 and made it his beloved childhood home and the place where he did most of his writing. Shortly after graduating from high school at the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, he began working as a reporter for The Baltimore Morning Herald and later gained national fame as an outspoken writer for The Baltimore Sunpapers. For a half century, his upstairs typewriter produced work that drew the attention of millions of readers in the U.S. and abroad. In the 1920s, his influence as an articulate social critic led The New York Times to call him "the most powerful private citizen in America." He authored more than 40 books, including The American Language, a thorough study of the English language as used by Americans from all walks of life that remains valued by linguists. Mencken also gained notoriety as a lead reporter at the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in Tennessee, entertained friends including Theodore Dreiser and F. Scott Fitzgerald here, and died in his third-floor bedroom in this house on January 29, 1956, at age 75.

Baltimore, Maryland · United States