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. 1,689 were built in the United States, 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.
Houston Public Library is the public library system serving Houston, Texas, United States.
The Denver Public Library is the public library system of the City and County of Denver, Colorado. The system includes the Denver Central Library, located in the Golden Triangle district of Downtown Denver, as well as 25 branch locations and two bookmobiles. The library's collection totals more than 2 million items, including books, reference materials, movies, music, and photographs. Of that total, more than 347,000 items are in specific collections including the Western History and Genealogy Department, Blair-Caldwell African American Research Library, and Reference Department holdings.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is a research library of the New York Public Library (NYPL) and an archive repository for information on people of African descent worldwide. Located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard between West 135th and 136th Streets in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, it has, almost from its inception, been an integral part of the Harlem community. It is named for Afro-Puerto Rican scholar Arturo Alfonso Schomburg.
The Louisville Free Public Library (LFPL) is the public library system in Louisville, Kentucky, and the largest public library system in the U.S. state of Kentucky.
The Mirror Lake Community Library is a Carnegie library built in 1915 in Beaux-Arts style. It was one of ten Florida Carnegie libraries to receive grants awarded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York from 1901 to 1917. Steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie provided funding for more than 3,000 Carnegie libraries in the United States, Canada, and Europe. The library is significant to the city's history as the first permanent home of the public library system and embodies the transformation of the city in the second decade of the twentieth century from a pioneer village to a city with viable cultural institutions.
The Oakland Public Library is the public library in Oakland, California. Opened in 1878, the Oakland Public Library currently serves the city of Oakland, along with neighboring smaller cities Emeryville and Piedmont. The Oakland Public Library has the largest collection of any public library in the East Bay, featuring approximately 1.5 million items. It consists of a main library located in downtown Oakland, and 16 branch libraries throughout the city.
The Crescent Hill Branch Library, constructed in 1908 in Louisville, Kentucky, was one of the first of nine Carnegie-endowed libraries built in Louisville, and is a branch of the Louisville Free Public Library. The building has a Beaux-Arts architecture style created by the Thomas & Bohne architect firm. The west side of the library was added in 1961 and the entire library was renovated in 1988. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1981 for its architectural significance and the educational impact on the community up to 1924.
The architecturally and historically significant Historic Avenue Cultural Center is an exhibit and event space that serves as an anchor to Mobile, Alabama’s budding Civil Rights and Cultural Heritage District. From the early 1990s to approximately 2015, it served as the National African American Archives and Museum. Formerly known as the Davis Avenue Branch of Mobile Public Library, it was the lone Black library in Mobile County during segregation.
Cahuenga Branch is the third oldest branch library facility in the Los Angeles Public Library system. Located at 4591 Santa Monica Boulevard in the East Hollywood section of Los Angeles, it was built in 1916 with a grant from Andrew Carnegie. One of three surviving Carnegie libraries in Los Angeles, it has been designated as a Historic-Cultural Monument and listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Virginia Lacy Jones was an American librarian who throughout her 50-year career in the field pushed for the integration of public and academic libraries. She was one of the first African Americans to earn a PhD in Library Science and became dean of Atlanta University's School of Library Sciences.
The Carnegie Branch Library at 13th St and 28th Ave in Meridian, Mississippi is one of two former Carnegie libraries in the city, both funded by a grant from Andrew Carnegie in 1904. This library was built for blacks while the other was built for whites. The other library was built at 25th Ave and 7th St and now houses the Meridian Museum of Art. Both buildings were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The black library was demolished in 2008.
Public libraries in the American Colonies can be traced back to 1656, when a Boston merchant named Captain Robert Keayne willed his collection of books to the town.
Rachel Davis Harris was an American librarian and activist. She was an influential female African American director and children's librarian of the Louisville Free Public Library, Western Colored Branch, one of the first segregated libraries built in the southern United States. She promoted library outreach to youths and equitable access to library services in the black community during the Jim Crow era.
The Live Oak Public Libraries are a consortium of sixteen public libraries in the Savannah metropolitan area and Hinesville – Fort Stewart metropolitan area of Georgia, United States. The library provides services for Chatham County, Effingham County, and Liberty County. The library headquarters are located in the Bull Street Library in Savannah, which is one of two Carnegie libraries in the system.
East Henry Street Carnegie Library, also known as the Savannah Carnegie Library, and historically as the Carnegie Colored Library, is a public library established for and by African Americans in Savannah, Georgia during the segregation era. The historic building has been preserved and renovated. It is now a branch in Savannah's Live Oak Public Libraries system. The library is an example of Prairie style architecture and is one of only two Carnegie library projects for African-Americans in Georgia. It was the local library for James Alan McPherson, who became the first African American writer to win a Pulitzer Prize and for Clarence Thomas who went on to become a judge on the United States Supreme Court. The building has won honors for its renovation and historical preservation. It is a contributing property of the Savannah Victorian Historic District.
The W. L. D. Johnson Neighborhood Library is a Houston Public Library branch in Houston, Texas. It replaced the Carnegie Colored Library, a Carnegie Library established by Houston's African American community in the Fourth Ward that was demolished for Interstate Highway 45 construction in 1962. The current branch is located at 3517 Reed Road. The library is named after W.L.D. Johnson, Sr., a man who raised funds for the purchase of the Carnegie Colored Library and served on the board of directors of that library. The new library building was dedicated on June 16, 1964 and replaced the original Carnegie Colored Library.
Thomas Fountain Blue was a minister, educator, and civic leader who led the Colored Branches of the Louisville Free Public Library (LFPL) and was an early trainer of African-American librarians. Blue was the first African-American to head a public library and his efforts led to the Louisville Free Public Library being nationally recognized as a leader in segregated library administration and education for African Americans.
Marian M. Hadley was Nashville, Tennessee's first African American librarian, serving as the first librarian of the Nashville Negro Public Library, a branch of the Nashville Public Library for African American patrons. She went on to work at the Chicago Public Library for almost twenty years, building and promoting the library's collection of African American history and culture.
The history of libraries for African Americans in the United States includes the earliest segregated libraries for African Americans that were school libraries. The fastest library growth happened in urban cities such as Atlanta while rural towns, particularly in the American South, were slower to add Black libraries. Andrew Carnegie and the Works Progress Administration helped establish libraries for African Americans, including at historically Black college and university campuses. Many public and private libraries were segregated until after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling of Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
