Enoch Pratt

Pratt, a Baltimore hardware merchant, gave the city a central library and four branches in 1882 plus an endowment, on the condition that the city pay an annual sum towards running it. That arrangement, the donor building and the public paying upkeep, became a model Carnegie later copied. The Enoch Pratt Free Library opened in 1886 and still operates as Baltimore's public library system and Maryland's state library resource centre.