Loading Events

←Back

Rosalie Stahl Center, Mildred F. Sawyer Library at Suffolk University

+ Google Map
73 Tremont Street
Boston, MA 02108 United States

Suffolk University, in downtown Boston, began as a law school in 1906. Its founder, Gleason Archer, Sr., was given money for his own schooling by a benefactor who asked that he extend the same favor to others. Archer opened what was then Archer’s Evening Law School as an affordable option for students with full-time day jobs, eventually renaming it Suffolk School of Law and moving the college to his downtown law offices. By 1930, it was one of the largest law schools in the country; in 1934, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences was added.

The Rosalie K. Stahl Center, across the street from the Omni Parker House Hotel, was acquired by the university in 2005 and named for Suffolk University trustee Rosalie Stahl. The building sits on the site of the former Tremont House, razed in 1895, where Davy Crockett and Charles Dickens were once guests. Today, the Stahl Center hosts Suffolk’s Mildred F. Sawyer Library, which boasts over 128,000 books and 144,000 documents on microfilm. The library is also home to the famous Clark Collection of African American Literature, founded in 1971 by English professor, Dr. Edward Clark. Clark began to collect texts—in particular, 20th century fiction, poetry, and literary criticism—in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. His objective was to amass the complete works of all black American writers since the 1700s, though he took special interest in black writers with ties to New England. The Clark Collection currently contains over 6,000 works, by more than 2,730 African American authors. Clark said of his work,

“I believed that next to knowing a people personally, one can know them most through art and especially literary art, where the complexity of human beings is explored at the fullest possible range.”

The Stahl Center is also the headquarters of the nonprofit Salamander, Inc., which publishes Salamander—a literary journal of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—twice a year. Established by Jennifer Barber in 1992 and run out of her attic for many years, the magazine moved to Suffolk University in 2005.

Past Events

Events List Navigation

April 2018

Who’s There: a Reading of New Translations in French and English

April 14, 2018 | 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Free

You are invited to a reading at the Suffolk Poetry Center on Saturday, April 14 with poets DAVID FERRY, JENNIFER BARBER, DANIELLE LEGROS GEORGES, EMMANUEL MERLE, and essayist MARJORIE SALVODON. Each writer will be presented in both English and French. Translators include PETER BROWN, EMMANUEL MERLE, and CAROLINE TALPE. This event is free and open to the public.  

Find out more »
October 2018

Poets JENNIFER FRANKLIN, JOAN HOULIHAN, and DAN TOBIN reading at Suffolk University

October 28, 2018 | 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Free

The Suffolk University English Department welcomes you to a poetry reading on Sunday, October 28th, at 3pm, featuring Jennifer Franklin, Joan Houlihan, and Dan Tobin.

Find out more »
+ Export Events

Did You Know?

Certain books were “banned in Boston” at least as far back as 1651, when one William Pynchon wrote a book criticizing Puritanism.