H.L. Mencken Home - Baltimore

H. L. Mencken's home is on Hollins Street in Baltimore, Maryland.  It was here the noted journalist lived from 1883 to his death in 1956.  He was born Henry Louis Mencken on September 12, 1880, to Ann Margaret and August Mencken, Sr., in a home on Lexington Street.  At the age of three Mencken's family moved to this three story, red brick home in the Union Square neighborhood.  August owned and ran a cigar factory with his brother and had hopes of his son joining the company, but young H. L. had developed a taste for reading and had aspirations to be a writer.  After he graduated from The Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in 1896 he worked for a few years for his father, but in 1898 took a writing class at the Cosmopolitan University.  When his father died in early 1899 Mencken was free to pursue his literary career and almost immediately applied to, and was accepted at, The Baltimore Morning Herald.  In 1906, when the Herald folded after a merger with other local papers, he joined The Baltimore Sun where he would remain until he quit writing in 1948.  At the Sun he gained his reputation as a journalist with his essays and editorials, many of which would later be reprinted in book form, earning him the title "The Sage of Baltimore."  In 1925 he attended the Scopes "Monkey Trial" in Dayton, Tennessee and would later be immortalized as the character of E.K. Hornebck in the fictionalized account of the trial, Inherit The Wind.  In 1930 Mencken, traditionally opposed to marriage, married an English professor at Goucher College, Sara Haardt, whom he had known for several years.  Their union was successful, but Sara, always ill, and suffering from tuberculosis, died in 1935, leaving a heartbroken Mencken.  On November 23, 1948, he suffered a stroke, which left him physically, but not mentally, impaired for the rest of his life.  No longer able to write, he spent his last years here with small groups of friends, socializing as much as he was able, until his death on January 29, 1956.  During his days he was a respected commentator on life, as well as a syndicated columnist, critic, English language scholar, and newspaper editor.  His social circle included F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ben Hecht, Anita Loos and Theodore Dreiser.  In more recent years private papers of his have come forth which also show that he was an elitist and a racist, commenting on the local black and Jewish population with honest, but misplaced, candor.  His reputation has suffered for these ideas.  His home was turned into a museum which opened from 1983 to 1997.  The H. L. Mencken House was added to the National Register of Historic Places and designated a National Historic Landmark in 1983. 

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