Carnegie Libraries

Some Interesting Facts About Carnegie Libraries:

Carnegie libraries all have the familiar pillared entrances and often steep front steps. More than 170 Carnegie libraries list Main Street as their address. Pre-Carnegie, there were only 600 hundred public libraries to serve a population pushing eighty million. Most were crammed along the East Coast. One was stuck over a butcher shop. Another, stuffed inside a public washroom. A third sat on top of the local fire department. By the time Andrew Carnegie finished donating over $40 million to build public libraries, the country would be richer by 1,689 new libraries.

Every state received at least one Carnegie grant except Delaware and Rhode Island. The grants averaged around $2-3 per resident, with the majority going to towns fewer than 15,000 people. To qualify for a Carnegie grant, a town had to do its part. In fact, it had to do three parts. First, it had to request a grant. Following that, it had to provide a suitable site for the building, and third and most importantly, it had to put into place a taxation mechanism to annually guarantee an amount equal to 10 percent of the grant for the library's upkeep. That's when things could get a little stuck.

Grudgingly, people had gotten used to chipping in to support their police and fire departments. But a library? To that point, libraries had stayed afloat on the generosity of the local women's club and church groups and that seemed to suit most people just fine. But it wouldn't suit Carnegie. If a community wanted one of his grants, it would have to show a real commitment. It would have to show that it valued a library every bit as highly as any other community service and demonstrate it by reaching into its own pocketbook.

Once a community had been okayed for its grant, the choices of library design were its own. The design most often chosen was classical, a style popularized by the buildings constructed for Chicago's 1893 Colombian Exposition. Carnegie did have a few basic guidelines, however. One was that each library had a ten-foot basement to house its offices, bathrooms, and heating equipment... hence the need for the familiar raised entrances.

The Carnegie library grant program came to an end in 1919 following Andrew Carnegie's death. Many of the libraries Carnegie funded are now gone due to Mother Nature. What usually does in a Carnegie, though, is no different than what usually does us all in. Age. Times change. Over the years, a good number have found themselves hemmed in by other buildings, making expansion to serve a growing population physically impossible. Bringing them into the computer age is no easy task, either. When they were originally built, some Carnegies had only 4 electrical outlets. Adapting the aged buildings to its handicapped-accessible requirements is difficult and costly.

As a result, approximately 350 Carnegies are libraries no longer. Some are schools; some police buildings; some museums. Some simply stand vacant. The unluckiest ones don't stand at all. What's the prognosis for the remainder? Nearly 400 Carnegies have been placed on the National Register of Historic places so they will be preserved.

Adapted from the Public Libraries Journal, December 2001.

Susan