"And the library was opened to working men as well as apprentices. "He made his case so well that the administrator backed off immediately," explains Carnegie biographer David Nasaw. So 17-year-old Andy got the letter published in The Pittsburgh Dispatch. He sent a letter to the library administrator asking for access to the library, but the administrator turned him down flat. He was determined to improve his lot, but he couldn't pay the $2 subscription for a local library that was available only to apprentices (and he certainly couldn't afford to buy books). The mission was born in Allegheny City, Pa., where Carnegie worked as a bobbin boy in a textile mill - his job was to fill the bobbins with thread and oil them for the machines. Those were the visionary keystones of Carnegie's library mission. "It went from being for just the wealthy elite landowners and planters to actually being a service for the entire county that everybody has access to," he says. This was one of the first really beautiful public buildings," he says. "This went in well before the monumental limestone and marble buildings of Pennsylvania Avenue, Constitution Avenue.
Washington writer Paul Dickson, author of The Library in America, says the marble palace was an early and imposing Capitol institution.
During the Depression, D.C.'s Carnegie Library was called "the intellectual breadline." No one had any money, so you went there to feed your brain. It opened in 1903 to women, children, all races - African-Americans remember when it was the only place downtown where they could use the bathrooms. The building was "dedicated to the diffusion of knowledge." Inscribed above the doorway are the words: Science, Poetry, History. Paul Dickson, author of The Library in America, says this library was "one of the first really beautiful public buildings" in the city.Ĭarnegie donated $300,000 to build Washington, D.C.'s oldest library - a beautiful beaux arts building that dates back to 1903. The Carnegie Library in Washington, D.C., dates back to 1903.
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