In 1890, the Pratt Institute opened one of the country's first library schools, with the Pratt Free Library as its laboratory. The Daily Eagle reported on January 20, 1895: "Pratt Institute's new library building is gradually nearing completion. When ready for occupancy it will be one of the most imposing structures in this big city." The Pratt library had been earlier located in the main building and opened to the public in 1888 as the first free public library in Brooklyn- not limited to Pratt Students. Excessive demand for it services- it was, said the Daily Eagle in 1895, "thronged with students, literary workers, and bibliomaniacs every afternoon"- lead to the construction of a separate library building, dedicated on May 26, 1896. At the dedication, Pratt President Frederic Bayley Pratt presided; the Reverend John Humpstone, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church, said a prayer; and the famous Dannreuther Quarter performed Mendelssohn's overtire to Athalie, Anton Rubinstein's Music of the Spheres, and "Walther's Prize Song" From Wagner's Die Meistersinger. And then New York State Librarian Melvil Dewey (of decimal system fame) addressed the assembly, followed by a prayer from the Reverend Samuel McConnel, pastor of the Church of the Holy Trinity on Montague Street. It was a grand event.

Architect William B. Tubby's Romanesque Revival building housed reference and circulating collections, including a children's collection, as well as an exhibition room, and classrooms for the library school. (In 1982 architect Giorgio Cavaglieri added the south terrace with views down onto new stacks. After 1940, with the opening of the new central library at Grand Army Plaza, Pratt's library was no longer the much-needed municipal resource it had been for 52 years and was restricted to institute students.