QUEEN ELIZABETH I’S INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE SPANISH ARMADA, DECEMBER 20, 1587. | PHOTO BY HUCK BEARD

There’s a room in Pittsburgh — actually, a former church — where you can inspect Babe Ruth’s contract with the Boston Red Sox. You can study the handwriting of centuries-old kings and queens. You can examine documents detailing the only voyage of the Titanic (and gaze at a scale model of the doomed ship).

If you’re a musician, you can study the handwritten scales of Richard Wagner’s “Wedding March.” You can even read a few lines of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” written in the author’s hand. The originals of these priceless documents are part of the 10,000-plus collections in the Karpeles Manuscript Library, amassed by the late mathematician, philanthropist and collector David Karpeles.

Karpeles and his wife, Marsha, established a network of satellite locations dubbed the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museums, where painstaking reproductions of these one-of-a-kind documents can be viewed and studied.

The Pittsburgh location — one of seven total, all deliberately placed in mid-size or smaller cities — can be found in the former Holy Innocents Church in Sheraden. You can visit, free of charge, from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays; the collection rotates regularly, so stop back now and then to get new glimpses at written history.

Find it!
3021 Landis St., Pittsburgh