Enoch Pratt Free Library
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| Type | Free, (Municipal/State) Public Library |
|---|---|
| Established | 1882/1886 |
| Location | 400 Cathedral Street, (between West Franklin and Mulberry Streets), Baltimore, Maryland |
| Branches | 22 |
| Other information | |
| Director | Chief Executive Officer/Director vacant |
| Website | http://www.prattlibrary.org, http://www.epfl.net |
The Enoch Pratt Free Library is the free public library system of the City of Baltimore, Maryland. Its Central Library is located at 400 Cathedral Street and occupies the northeastern three-quarters of a city block bounded by West Franklin Street to the north, Cathedral Street to the east, West Mulberry Street to the south and Park Avenue to the west. Located on historic Cathedral Hill, north of the downtown business district, the library is also in the Mount Vernon-Belvedere-Mount Royal neighborhood and cultural/historic district. The Cathedral Street Main Library is the flagship of the entire Enoch Pratt Free Library system, now with twenty-two community and regional branches, it was designated the "Maryland State Library Resource Center" by the General Assembly of Maryland in 1971.
Its establishment began on January 21, 1882 when long-time local hardware merchant, banking and steamship company executive (but born and raised in Massachusetts) and philanthropist Enoch Pratt, (1808-1896), offered a gift of a central library, four branch libraries (with two additional shortly thereafter), and a financial endowment of US $1,058,333 in a significant piece of correspondence to Mayor William Pinkney Whyte and the City Council of Baltimore. His intention was to establish a public circulating library that (as he described it): "shall be for all, rich and poor without distinction of race or color, who, when properly accredited, can take out the books if they will handle them carefully and return them." The grant was accepted by the municipal government and approved by the voters later that year in an election on October 25. From 1993 until August 11, 2016, Dr. Carla Hayden was the CEO of Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland and is now the Librarian of Congress. Hayden and the staff of the Pennsylvania Avenue branch were praised for opening the library on Monday April 27, 2015, during the protests over the death of Freddie Gray. The library's location, at the intersection of Pennsylvania and West North Avenues, found itself at the center of the protests, giving community members a safe place during the troubled times.
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