John Durcan descends a stairwell in Baltimore’s central Enoch Pratt Free Library to its three subterranean levels—each one as long as a city block—known as “the stacks.” The Gilbane Building Co. senior project manager asks a passing library employee how many books the building can house. “Over a million,” the man says proudly. “It might be more than that.”
That point of pride, however, has kept Durcan up nights. Durcan says he will rest more easily when his team activates the first sprinkler system ever installed in the nearly 85-year-old library. “This is the largest building I’ve ever seen without a sprinkler system,” he says of the 290,000-sq-ft library, which is filled with century-old books and wooden bookshelves. “It’s like a giant kindling box here,” he adds. “We are on pins and needles watching every spark that falls off everything we are welding to make sure it doesn’t land on a book or start a fire.”