Carnegie library

For other uses, see Carnegie Library (disambiguation).

A Carnegie library is a library built with money donated by Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. A total of 2,509 Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929, including some belonging to public and university library systems. Most of them -- 1,689 -- were built in the United States, with 660 in the United Kingdom and Ireland, 125 in Canada, and 25 others in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Serbia, Belgium, France, the Caribbean, Mauritius, Malaysia, and Fiji.

At first, Carnegie libraries were almost exclusively in places with which he had a personal connection: his birthplace in Scotland and the area around his adopted hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1899, Carnegie began to fund to libraries outside these areas. Ultimately, very few of the towns that requested a grant, committing to his terms for operation and maintenance, were refused. By the time the last grant was made, he had funded the construction of nearly half of the 3,500 libraries in the United States.

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