Carnegie Libraries: The Future Made Bright

A Teaching with Historic Places lesson from the National Park Service, written by Roberta Copp, a librarian at Richland County Public Library, South Carolina, from National Register files for libraries in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Washington and Utah. For units on American social history and reform, 1865–1919.

Andrew Carnegie. Library of Congress.

For many Americans, the world of reading began at the door of a Carnegie library. Between 1886 and 1919, the industrialist Andrew Carnegie gave more than $40 million for 1,679 library buildings in towns large and small; many still serve as libraries, museums, offices or restaurants.

Carnegie stands out in the history of giving for the scale — he gave away $350 million, nearly 90 percent of a fortune made in railroads and steel — and the range of his causes, from a Simplified Spelling Board and 7,000 church organs to the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. He also stands out because some questioned his motives and how he made his money.

Students will: see how Carnegie embodied "rags to riches"; explain why he chose libraries; examine what libraries say about the society they serve; weigh the effects of philanthropy; and find out how their own library has been funded.

Inquiry question. Show students the Harper's Weekly cartoon below, without its caption: What point might it be making? What do the buildings have in common?

Setting the stage

Colonial libraries held mostly religious books; in the 18th century members began pooling money in social libraries, which lent only to members, and after the Revolution came specialised mercantile, mechanics' and seamen's libraries. In the late 19th century the "free" library movement spread: reformers hoped libraries would help immigrants succeed and the poor rise, make voters wiser, and offer an alternative to drinking and gambling. But money was short and towns had more urgent needs — until Carnegie's money arrived.

Map 1: Carnegie libraries per million residents, 1920. National Park Service.

Reading 1: Andrew Carnegie

Born in 1835 in Dunfermline, Scotland, Carnegie grew up hearing men read aloud and discuss books from the tradesmen's subscription library his weaver father had helped found. He had only three years of school. When industrial textile mills ruined his father's trade, the family emigrated to Allegheny, outside Pittsburgh.

After a year in a textile factory he became a telegraph messenger. Col. James Anderson of Allegheny opened his personal library every Saturday to any young worker who wanted to borrow a book, and Carnegie later said the colonel had opened windows for the light of knowledge. In 1853, when the library's use was to be restricted, he wrote to the Pittsburgh Dispatch defending working boys' right to it — and resolved that if he ever became rich, he would give other poor workers the same chance.

He taught himself telegraphy, joined the Pennsylvania Railroad at 18 and rose fast, investing in locomotives, oil, iron and steel. From 1865 he ran the Keystone Bridge Company, then built Carnegie Steel, which he sold in 1901 for $250 million.

In "The Gospel of Wealth" (1889) he argued that the rich should live without extravagance, provide moderately for their families, and give the rest for the common good — helping those who would help themselves. A second essay named seven fields for giving: universities, libraries, medical centres, parks, meeting and concert halls, public baths and churches. He thought a library the best gift a community could get, because it let people improve themselves; in Baltimore, Enoch Pratt's library had drawn 37,000 users in a year.

Two periods of giving:

In 1916 economist Dr. Alvin Johnson visited 100 Carnegie libraries and reported that to be effective they needed trained staff. Libraries already promised were built until 1923, but after 1919 Carnegie's support went to library education. He died in 1919, having given nearly $350 million to causes he believed in.

Document 1: Applying for a library

Towns wrote to Carnegie's secretary, James Bertram, who sent a schedule of questions — population, any existing library and its finances, the tax the town would pledge for upkeep, and whether a site was available. A successful town's council then resolved to provide a site and an annual tax levy.

Reading 2: Obtaining a Carnegie library

Most "libraries" of the day were a few books in odd places — shacks, hat shops, stables, even a rest room whose matron doubled as librarian.

The Homestead problem. Some refused to ask. Carnegie had long said that during strikes his mills should close, strikebreakers never be hired, and disputes be settled peacefully. But in July 1892, with Carnegie in Scotland, his partner Henry Clay Frick locked out striking union workers at the Homestead plant and hired 300 Pinkerton detectives. They arrived by raft on the Monongahela to find an army of strikers, and hours of gunfire left people dead and injured; the state militia held the plant until the union broke. Carnegie had not called in the Pinkertons, but did nothing to stop Frick or settle the strike. Critics said his fortune rested on underpaid labour, and that workers' long hours left them no time to use his libraries; the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote that "ten thousand 'Carnegie Public Libraries' would not compensate" for the evils of Homestead.

The conditions. Most towns applied anyway. They had to:

• own the site, often bought with tax money, with room to expand;
• pledge to spend 10 percent of the gift every year on upkeep — Carnegie held that "the community which is not willing to maintain a Library had better not possess it," though opponents complained of higher taxes.

Design. From 1908 Bertram vetted plans, then wrote Notes on Library Bildings — Carnegie favoured simplified spelling — with six model floor plans. The favourite put adults on one side, children on the other and the librarian between, facing the door; exteriors were to be plain and dignified, not "Greek temples". He rejected poor plans bluntly — one Washington town was told a schoolboy could do better. His raised main floors gave bright, airy rooms and the flight of front steps that marks a Carnegie library, hard going for anyone who has trouble walking. Most surviving Carnegie libraries are brick, cheap to maintain; none is wood.

Reading 3: Two Carnegie libraries

Medford, Wisconsin. This logging town owed its library to women: the Women's Club and the Women's Christian Temperance Union opened it in 1903, issuing 549 borrower's cards in a town of 1,758. A $6,000 Carnegie grant in 1913, with the city keeping up its $600 a year, paid for a Prairie School building that opened in 1917. Its 2,221 volumes grew to about 21,900 items by 1984; the town then built a new library, and the old one houses the Chamber of Commerce.

Connellsville, Pennsylvania. This town shipped coal and coke to steel mills such as Carnegie's. In 1899 it won a $50,000 grant. The chosen site was the old Connell graveyard, and moving the bodies took almost a year and angered many; opponents of the new library tax protested to Carnegie, whose office replied that the elected council had approved it. Building began in 1901, producing a massive neoclassical library of Ohio stone that now also houses the local historical society.

Medford Free Public Library, Wisconsin. National Park Service.

Carnegie Free Library, Connellsville, Pennsylvania. National Park Service.

Richfield Public Library, Utah. National Park Service.

Carnegie library, Spokane, Washington. National Park Service.

Sample plans from James Bertram's Notes on Library Bildings*.*

"Building a Very Solid Temple of Fame." Harper's Weekly.

Activities

1. Did he live up to his words? Groups compare Carnegie's essays with his homes, his factories and his charities.
2. Famous philanthropists. Students play Rockefeller, Mellon, Vanderbilt or Morgan, questioned by student journalists.
3. Spending a fortune. With $100 million, how much would you keep, and what would you give, to whom?
4. Your library. Research how it began and how it has been funded.

Sources

• National Park Service, Teaching with Historic Places, "Carnegie Libraries: The Future Made Bright," by Roberta Copp. https://www.nps.gov/articles/carnegie-libraries-the-future-made-bright-teaching-with-historic-places.htm
• The lesson draws on George S. Bobinski, Carnegie Libraries (1969); Carnegie's Autobiography; and National Register nominations for the Medford Free Public Library (1993), the Carnegie Free Library in Connellsville (1981) and the Carnegie Libraries of Washington (1982).
• The original also has a table of Carnegie libraries and residents by state in 1920, summarised here by its map.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased, apart from short quotations from before 1920; rewritten in hubnx's own words.