Serendipitous Beginnings
A Carnegie Library Building in Washington D.C.
By the late 19th century, Washington, D.C. residents were in need of a public lending library building. In 1896, two separate groups advocating for a library, the Washington City Free Library and the Free Public Library, joined forces to become the District of Columbia Public Library. A growing collection of books and some funding allowed them to operate out of rented space. However, the DCPL realized that in order to function efficiently, they would need to relocate or construct a building of their own.
The construction of a new building seemed unlikely with their limited funds. However, that would quickly change after Brainard H. Warner, vice president of the DCPL’s Board of Trustees, had a chance encounter with Andrew Carnegie in the White House on January 12, 1899. Carnegie, a multimillionaire steel tycoon turned philanthropist, was waiting to visit with President William McKinley when Warner approached him about donating the funds to construct a library building.
Breaking Ground
Who Built the Carnegie Library Building?
Once a location was chosen and the designs were finalized, construction of the Carnegie Library building broke ground in April, 1901. At this time, Washington D.C. was growing into a major city with a booming building industry. Craftsmen and carpenters could find employment opportunities in D.C. that were not available elsewhere throughout the United States. At the time, large-scale construction projects such as public works were contracted out to large building companies, many of whose employees had specialized skills.
The Carnegie Library building is highly ornamental with various architectural embellishments. It is likely that the laborers who constructed the Carnegie building were more skilled than the common carpenter or bricklayer.
In The Stacks
Who Worked at the Carnegie Library?
By the early 1960's, the Carnegie Library building was the central office for 17 additional DCPL branches. Library staff members were always busy with a wide range of responsibilities including administrative needs, classifying and recording new books, book repairs, and personnel management.
Library staff were unsatisfied with their working conditions from the day the building opened in 1903. The library layout was equipped with open shelves and room for public reading and browsing, but the work space was small and overcrowded. In order to access the majority of the library’s books, patrons filled out a request form that was given to a staff member, who would then retrieve requested books from the closed stacks. Library managers continued to complain, and eventually office space expanded to areas outside of the building. Library trustees explored expanding or moving locations as early as the 1920’s.
"A University for the People"
Who Used the Carnegie Library Building?
From 1903-1972, DC residents enjoyed the Carnegie Library building as an open public library. Over the decades, the library served as a communal institution for Washingtonians, as well as downtown commuters from Virginia and Maryland.
Children were welcomed into the building, as the library collaborated with local schools, offered resources to teachers, and had programs and reading rooms created specifically for children.
Seen to the right is the war reading room in 1942. Image courtesy, DC Public Library
A Non-Segregated Building
“I used to go to the library a lot. Strangely, that was not segregated.” Frank R. Jackson.
By 1900, D.C. was a national Black cultural center with a growing Black middle-class, due in part to the available educational and professional opportunities. However, the city was still impacted by both de jure and de facto segregation. Restrictive covenants forced Black Washingtonians into separate neighborhoods.
When the Carnegie Library began serving the public, the DC public schools were legally segregated, and most public facilities and activities were segregated by custom. Carnegie did not impose any decisions about the internal social structure of his libraries, and other library buildings he funded in the southern United States were in fact segregated. Yet the Carnegie Library, from the start, did not separate services nor spaces based on race. This practice continued even when President Woodrow Wilson enforced segregation in the U.S. Government departments in 1913. Frank R. Jackson, born in 1908, recounted, “I used to go to the library a lot. Strangely that was not segregated.”
By the early 20th century, one of the largest Black neighborhoods, today known as Shaw, lay to the north of the Carnegie Library building. This close proximity made the non-segregated library even more accessible to D.C.’s Black community.
Post-Public Library Era
By the 1970’s, the Carnegie Library building had seen better days. After the DC Public Library moved out of the Carnegie building in 1972, the building continued to serve various occupants for the next three decades. Over the years there were efforts to reinstate the Carnegie Library building to its original purpose, as a place for public education. In the 1980’s, plans for the University of the District of Columbia included a new campus that would incorporate the Carnegie Library building. While the campus was never built, the Carnegie was taken early for the UDC Architecture Department, which remained there until 1993.
In 1999, the Historical Society of Washington DC, (now doing business as the DC History Center) took control of the building as the site for a new City Museum, which opened to the public in 2003. However, it was only open for one year before closing its doors. While the museum project ended, the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.’s Kiplinger Research Library and several exhibit galleries remained open to the public, and the organization’s offices remained. In order to support the expensive property, the Historical Society rented out spaces for educational uses.
In 2011, a lease renegotiation transferred facility management to Events DC, the city’s leading tourism and convention authority, and allowed the non-profit Historical Society to focus on its educational mission rather than the operation of a historic building site.
Carnegie Library Building Today
Today, the Carnegie Library building is managed by Events DC and occupied by the DC History Center and an Apple store. In 2016, the three entities signed an agreement to restore the Carnegie Library building to its original glory. A visitor to the Carnegie Library building today can expect to see a wide range of people, from tech professionals checking out Apple’s newest products, to elementary school students engaging with the DC History Center’s exhibits, to researchers immersed in archival material in the Kiplinger Research Library.