By Charlie Patton
Located in an architecturally striking former church on First Street at the south edge of Springfield, the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum represents something of a Jacksonville hidden treasure, despite the building’s imposing size.
Even Richard Minor, a lifelong Jacksonville resident who has been the museum’s director for the past six years, admits he never visited the building until he applied for a job there.
Inside the former Christian Science church built in the Greek revival style, rectangular glass cases are filled with documents assembled by David Karpeles, a math professor turned real estate investor who owns more than 1 million manuscripts, the largest private collection in the world.
Currently on display are letters and manuscripts written by Sigmund Freud, the Austrian neurologist considered the father of psychiatry. He is known for his theories on the unconscious mind and for creating the clinical practice of psychoanalysis.
The Freud documents, which will be in Jacksonville through the end of April, span the years from 1883, when he was a young doctor just beginning his career, to 1935, four years before his death.
READ MORE via Jacksonville’s Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum has the write stuff | jacksonville.com.

