TIL Andrew Carnegie believed that public libraries were the key to self-improvement for ordinary folk. In the years between 1886 & 1917, Carnegie financed the construction of 2811 public libraries. Ironically this is the same reason rich people are now trying to defund libraries. Knowledge is power
Oberlin got its Carnegie Library after a con-woman claiming to be Andrew Carnegie's illegitimate daughter caused a local bank failure. Carnegie felt so bad that he donated money to cover the accounts that students had lost, and added the Library for good measure. omeka.ohio5.org/exhibits/sho...
There's a Carnegie library near me that is the coolest architecture in the neighborhood. The library outgrew the space so it now hosts the Hockaday Museum of art
Quite glad they got a new library built over in Finglas, beside the primary school there
This is the Carnegie Library in Vermillion, South Dakota. Now used my the USD Law School. You can see the “new” library beyond it. My mil was librarian here many years ago.
Ontario small towns are thankful for them. Many still exist, and several are the heart of really well done expansions/refurbs
There's a line in Allan Gurganus's "Plays Well With Others", set in the 1980s, that discusses how the barons of the 1880s funded libraries and museums, etc., while the wildly wealthy of the 1980s snorted most of their money up their rebuilt noses. I wonder how he'd write that line now, maybe yachts?
Couple Carnegie libraires left standing in Chicago
Bruce Wayne as a social model
the libraries are by far his finest legacy absolute piece of shit, but the libraries are wonderful wasn’t even a tax dodge, really, either