Enoch Pratt Free Library

The Enoch Pratt Free Library is the free public library system of Baltimore, Maryland. Its Central Library is located on 400 Cathedral Street (southbound) and occupies the northeastern three quarters of a city block bounded by West Franklin Street (U.S. Route 40 westbound) to the north, Cathedral Street to the east, West Mulberry Street (U.S. Route 40 eastbound) to the south, and Park Avenue (northbound) 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, which includes twenty-one neighborhood branches, it was designated the "Maryland State Library Resource Center" by the General Assembly of Maryland in 1971. Central Library operates as the state library for Maryland. History Its establishment began on January 21, 1882, when the longtime local hardware merchant, banking, and steamship company executive and philanthropist Enoch Pratt (1808-1896) offered a gift of a central library, four branch libraries (with two additional shortly afterward), 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. 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 soon accepted by the municipal government and approved by the voters in an election on October 25, 1882. One of the early hires at the library was William A. Williams, the first Black Catholic seminarian in America (who later dropped out due to the prevailing racist attitudes of the day).