George Peabody Library

The stack room of the George Peabody Library in Baltimore, seen at night in 2013. Edmund G. Lind designed it, and it opened in 1878. Five tiers of ornamental cast-iron balconies rise around an open atrium to a skylight 61 feet above the checkered floor, so the books line the walls like boxes in a theater. It is an American answer to the baroque halls of Europe, built in iron rather than carved wood.