Free to All: Carnegie Libraries and the Transformation of American Culture, 1886-1917

Between 1886 and 1917, Andrew Carnegie provided funds to build public libraries in 1412 American communities. Although they are aesthetically conservative buildings that play a minor role in the history of styles, Carnegie libraries provide useful insights into changes in turn-of-the-century American philanthropy, library design and cultural life.

First, the Carnegie Library Program helped redefine the nature of American philanthropy. Following the lead of paternalistic philanthropists who had preceded him, Carnegie donated expensive, multipurpose, cultural institutions dedicated in elaborate ceremonies that linked the giver and the townspeople in an open-ended familial relationship. By 1899, Carnegie sought to regularize his philanthropic practices by adopting a philanthropic organization modeled on the corporation. Chartered as the Carnegie Corporation in 1911, this new philanthropic machine replaced personal whim with regular, firmly-stated, policies, a change that helped dismantle the paternalistic basis of American philanthropy.

Second, Carnegie's library program helped redirect the development of American library design. In the nineteenth century, architectural patrons had entrusted library planning to architects who favored designs that contrasted a grand vista through a double-height, alcoved bookhall with domestically-scaled reading rooms dominated by the donor's portrait over the fireplace. Convinced that such designs sacrificed proper library accommodation to architectural effect, librarians lobbied unsuccessfully in the last quarter of the nineteenth century for large, single-height library rooms, subdivided only by low bookcases, with a centrally-placed circulation desk for easy supervision of the entire library. Sharing the librarians' interest in efficiency and regular procedure, Carnegie issued a pamphlet that codified their requirements into a set of five schematic plans, prompting recipient towns to bring their library designs into line with the librarians' model.

Finally, Carnegie's library program helped reshape the relationship between American culture and social reform. By dealing exclusively with a recipient town's elected officials, Carnegie effectively removed cultural matters from the hands of reform-minded women who had established town libraries west of the Appalachians. Once placed under the direction of the town's commercial elite, Carnegie libraries often ignored working-class readers, catering instead to middle-class users and to their economic interests.