page_title: Enoch Pratt Free Library
section_title: Original (1886–2015)
hierarchical_section_title: Enoch Pratt Free Library / Central Library building / Original (1886–2015)
caption_attribution_description: Photograph by Eli Pousson, 2017 March 25.
context_page_description: The Enoch Pratt Free Library is the free public library system of Baltimore, Maryland. Its Central Library and office headquarters are located on 400 Cathedral Street and occupy 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 downtown, the library is also in the Mount Vernon-Belvedere-Mount Royal neighborhood and cultural and historic district.
  The Cathedral Street Main Library is the flagship of the entire Enoch Pratt Free Library system, now with twenty-two community / neighborhood 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 the longtime local hardware merchant, banking, and steamship company executive and philanthropist Enoch Pratt, l offered a gift of a central library, four branch libraries, and a financial endowment of more than $1 million in a significant piece of correspondence, letter of offer to Mayor William Pinkney Whyte and the Baltimore City Council.
context_section_description: The merchant and financier Enoch Pratt, in a letter to the Baltimore City Council on January 21, 1882, offered to donate and construct a free public library with several neighborhood branches open to all the citizens of the City of Baltimore (and its surrounding environs). After some debate and discussion which was also widely reported in the local newspapers, the mayor and council accepted the gift and the terms of its conditions later that year, which were subsequently approved by the citizens in a referendum held during an election that October, 1882.  Construction of a Central Library began later that year. The original Central Library building opened on January 5, 1886 . Part of Pratt's donation to the city, it was originally valued at approximately $250,000 and was accompanied by the gift of initially four other neighborhood branches in the quadrants of the city which also opened that year and were soon joined by two others, along with an endowment of $1.058 million (in 1880s money). However, always a very thrifty man, Mr. Pratt provided that the bricks from the three 1820s-era townhouses that were to be demolished for his new city library were to be knocked off, cleaned and re-used in constructing a parish house and hall for his church, the First Independent Church of Baltimore, now the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore.
  Designed by Charles L. Carson,"Old Central" occupied a fraction of the same plot of land as its successor 47 years later, facing West Mulberry Street near the corner of Cathedral Street. The structure's elaborate Romanesque Revival architecture became a target of criticism from journalists during  final years of existence: H. L. Mencken of the Baltimore Sun, a frequent and prolific user of the branch at Calhoun and Hollins Streets, judged it "so infernally hideous that it ought to be pulled down by the common hangman"
caption: Former branch number 5, now a church.
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