Born in 1925, Rus­sell Baker is the old­est of three chil­dren in an impov­er­ished rural Vir­ginia fam­ily. When Baker was 5, dur­ing the depths of the Great Depres­sion, his father died of diabetes.

Baker’s fam­ily moved to New Jer­sey and, in 1937, to Bal­ti­more. They lived at 1429 W. Lom­bard Street, across Union Square from the home of H.L. Mencken.

Baker grad­u­ated from Bal­ti­more City Col­lege and received his B.A. degree in Eng­lish from Johns Hop­kins in 1947, after tak­ing a break to serve in the U.S. Navy dur­ing WWII. With the help of a writ­ing teacher, Baker landed a job as a reporter at the Bal­ti­more Sun, cov­er­ing the police beat for two years.

In 1954, Baker was hired in the Wash­ing­ton Bureau of the New York Times. In 1962 he began writ­ing the “Observer” col­umn in the Times, for which he received the Pulitzer Prize for com­men­tary in 1979. He won a sec­ond Pulitzer in 1983 for his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Grow­ing Up.

For mem­bers of the television-watching audi­ence, Baker is per­haps best known as the host of the PBS pro­gram Mas­ter­piece The­atre from 1992 to 2004.

Today, Baker lives in retire­ment in Lees­burg, VA.

MORE INFO:
Wikipedia: Rus­sell Baker
Bal­ti­more Lit­er­ary Her­itage Project: Rus­sell Baker