Short answers, pulled from the story.
William Thompson Walters moved to Paris in 1861 as a nominal Confederate loyalist when the American Civil War broke out. He began collecting art during this exile, building a substantial foundation for what would become a public institution.
Henry Walters commissioned architect William Adams Delano to design an elaborate stone palazzo-style structure erected between 1904 and 1909. This Charles Street building faced South Washington Place and connected via overhead bridge to his adjacent townhouse on West Mount Vernon Place.
The collection includes ancient Egyptian artifacts, Greek sculpture, Roman sarcophagi, medieval ivories, and Renaissance bronzes. The museum displays two monumental 3,000-pound statues of the Egyptian lion-headed fire goddess Sekhmet on long-term loan from the British Museum.
Starting the 1st of October 2006 the museum enabled free admission year-round following substantial grants from Baltimore City and surrounding suburban arts agencies. In 2012 The Walters released nearly 20,000 images of its collections under a Creative Commons license for upload to Wikimedia Commons.
Dorothy Miner became the first Keeper of Manuscripts in 1934 and held that post until her death in 1973. She managed the manuscript holdings during the early development of the institution as a public museum.