The Reinvention of Fells Point’s Library 19

Pavlina Ilieva remembers when she first became aware of the old Enoch Pratt Free Library Branch No. 19 on South Ann Street, a few blocks north of the Fells Point waterfront. For a decade or so, Ilieva, who runs the Baltimore architecture studio PI.KL with her husband Kuo Pao Lian, would walk their dogs past the circa-1922 building on her way to get coffee at the Daily Grind.

She watched as the historic brick structure, which closed as a library in 2001 and then housed the nonprofit Education Based Latino Outreach center, struggled with maintenance and funding, ultimately being abandoned in 2018. Weeds overran the alleys and back lot; roof leaks degraded the ceilings, leaving cratered holes and paint peeling like laundry.

“It got to a point where the building was dangerous—it was full of black mold,” says Lian, recalling that one time the basement was three feet underwater. “And there was this morning when I just had this moment of like, how long has this been this way; why is it still sitting here?” says Ilieva.

She and Lian contacted the city to ask about the property and learned that they were taking proposals. So they submitted one, won the bid, and, in 2023, bought both the former library and the empty lot behind it.

The pair—who met in architecture school, settled in Fells Point, taught at Morgan State University (Ilieva) and MICA (Lian), and founded PI.KL (their initials) in 2010—have a lot of experience with restoring and developing old Baltimore spaces. They restored the circa-1786 Broadway Market. They converted an old auto body shop into R. House, Remington’s bustling food hall. And they recently completed Cedar House, the new events space connected to Patterson Park’s historic White House.

For the couple, and their three-member team, it’s about more than just fixing old buildings or erecting new ones.

“It’s about creating community through structures,” says Lian, who describes the “adaptive reuse” process as transforming introverted spaces into extroverted ones.

“IT’S ABOUT CREATING COMMUNITY THROUGH STRUCTURES.”

He envisions a warehouse or an old building as an enclosed box; the idea is to open it. “Let people come in and find creative ways to use it.”

“We did not build this building,” says Lian of what is now Library 19. “We’re the architects that were used to help bring it back to life.”

“The vision was always to grow the project with the neighborhood,” says Ilieva, and that now includes not only PI.KL’s new light-filled offices on the second floor, but an adjoining room that has been transformed into an archive called the Reference Collection, an open space lined with shelving that serves as a museum of sorts, housing artifacts from Good Neighbor and art-house books, and also hosts the occasional salon with creative agency partners, Cohere.

The cozy third floor is rented out to the wellness studio Casa de Luz. And the basement—once flooded and now filled with long tables, upholstered chairs, wooden benches, and high-window light—is an events space that recently hosted an Equitea pop-up and a winter market featuring Local Stitch, Cocina Luchadoras, Greedy Reads, and more.

“The neighborhood needs things that are not restaurants and bars and stores, where you don’t have to feel like you have to buy something,” says Ilieva.

Next comes further development, maybe some permanent businesses or an incubator, then a garden behind the library that will connect to another structure behind it and then to Register Street, effectively joining both ends of the block into a thoroughfare composed of public-facing spaces.

“What does a library do?” asks Lian, sitting downstairs at one of the long basement tables next to a woman on a laptop sipping Mexican cocoa. “Could we bring people together, create a new sort of collective that starts to support what Fells Point is? We would love to be a little village here.”

Because libraries have always housed villages, either at tables or on shelves.