Review: “Baltimore’s Pratt Central Library Emerges From Renovation with its Beauties Intact”

A resplendent Central Enoch Pratt Free Library/State Library Resource Center has emerged on Cathedral Street in downtown Baltimore. After more than three years of a basement-to-attic renovation, the 1933 main library building is a proud palace of public learning.

The majestic main hall has been scoured and shined. The structure’s central court atrium has new glass, lighting and a pristine, luminous interior. The design also achieved a welcome de-cluttering effect, and the place somehow seems larger than it ever was.

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A walk around the library shows this restoration was not a patch-up job. It was a lengthy campaign — it cost $115 million — to mend a structure that for more than 80 years has been a hard-used people’s university. Those who feared that the renovation would make the Pratt into a soulless computer information technology lab need not worry. The building retains the architectural dignity it always possessed.

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