Little, free libraries are popping up all over major cities across America; but in Baltimore, this really gigantic free library was way ahead of its time. 

The Book Thing of Baltimore is a delightful and anomalous building near Johns Hopkins campus that function as a free book shop where customers are prohibited from paying a single cent for anything on its shelves. 

Founded in September 1999 by former bartender Russel Wattenberg after overhearing local teachers lamenting an inability to provide their impoverished students with reading materials, The Book Thing is operated entirely by a staff of volunteers. The store’s extensive catalogue consists of a vast array of books and magazines, continually replenished through a system of in-person and mail-in donations, helped along by local city regulations against book donations to public libraries. 

A few simple tenets form The Book Thing’s only hard and fast rules: visitors are firmly forbidden for paying for any book, even when offered; let browsers choose whatever book they want; and reselling of books is a big no-no. Anyone and everyone is invited to stop by, peruse at his or her leisure, and leave with “up to 150,000 volumes per day, per person.”

Update October 2017: The Book Thing was temporarily closed after a fire, but it’s back open!