Among the many documents stored in the Archives Research Center at the Sandusky Library is a copy of a letter dated Oct. 7, 1899, and signed by Andrew Carnegie. Sent from Skibo Castle, which Carnegie had purchased as a residence in his native Scotland, the letter was addressed to Mrs. Frances Moss, and in it, the steel tycoon offered to donate money for a public library in Sandusky.
Carnegie’s largesse came with certain conditions, for his letter emphatically stated:
“I do not believe in helping a community that does help itself, but if Sandusky will give $3,000 a year to maintain a Public Library, I shall give $50,000 to build and equip one. All of this $50,000, must however be used for the Library, and not one cent of it for maintenance.”
Lover of books and learning
Born in 1835, Carnegie immigrated with his family to Allegheny, Pennsylvania, when he was 12 years old. Carnegie soon went to work as a telegraph messenger boy, and though his formal schooling was over, he continued his education by borrowing books from a local businessman’s private library. He never forgot the instruction and enjoyment he gained from those books; as he told the New York Times in 1899, “Is it any wonder that I decided then and there that if ever I had any surplus wealth I would use it in lending books to others?”
The original Carnegie building in Steubenville, opened in 1902 and renovated and expanded several times since, still houses the public library that serves both the city and Jefferson County.
Carnegie, in fact, eventually became the wealthiest person in the world in his time, thanks to early successful investments in the railroad industry and building what eventually became U.S. Steel. And he followed through on his musing. Carnegie — and later his philanthropic foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York — gave away most of his fortune in his later years, spending much of it on free-to-the-people libraries. He gave his first public library to his birthplace, Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1881, and eventually donated more than 2,500 library buildings around the globe — 1,681 of those in the United States, starting in 1886 with his American hometown of Allegheny and adding a few others in places where he had personal ties. In 1899, the year he spoke to the Times, he significantly increased his funding for libraries, and accordingly, citizens in East Liverpool, Steubenville, and Sandusky were the first in Ohio to apply for Carnegie library grants.
With his standard stipulation that the towns provide money for maintenance, Carnegie promised $50,000 to both East Liverpool and Steubenville on June 30, 1899. He apparently had a soft spot for those towns. Carnegie’s only breaks from that early job as a telegraph messenger had been spending two weeks every summer with his maternal uncle in East Liverpool, and after he had been promoted to telegraph operator, he worked for a time in Steubenville.
The first Carnegie public library in the state, however, was the Sandusky Library, thanks to Frances Moss, the recipient of that letter. She had been a personal acquaintance of Andrew Carnegie, according to Ron Davidson, special collections librarian there: “Her husband was from a family of prominent Sandusky bankers, and she was president of the ladies’ library association.” The gala dedication, attended by a host of politicians and celebrities, was on July 3, 1901.
Ohio’s Carnegie Hall
After the Civil War, women’s organizations throughout the nation spearheaded efforts to establish local libraries, and by staging musicals, plays, and lectures, Mrs. Moss and her cohorts raised $10,000 even before Carnegie pledged his money. Fittingly enough, the Sandusky Library’s design included a spacious, high-ceilinged room for concerts and cultural events. “The room had a pipe organ, so they called it Carnegie Hall,” says Davidson.
The elements of the Sandusky Library’s original, Richardsonian Romanesque-style exterior — including twin, castle-like turrets flanking its entrance — remain largely intact. But the interior space mushroomed two decades ago, when an ambitious renovation and expansion project joined it to the neighboring 1883 Erie County Jail, which contained 26 cells as well as a residence for sheriffs and their families. Both the library and jail were already on the National Register of Historic Places, and the project to connect them began on the 100th anniversary of the library’s opening.
While the jail addendum certainly makes it unique, perhaps the Sandusky Library’s most remarkable aspect is that it’s still serving the purpose Carnegie intended. So are the state’s second and third Carnegie libraries, which debuted, respectively, in Steubenville on March 12, 1902, and in East Liverpool on May 8, 1902. Both towns hired women with library training to head their new libraries, and Steubenville’s librarian, Ellen Summers Wilson, enthusiastically promoted the library on streetcars and at factory gates (some say she never left; her ghost supposedly haunts the building).
Lasting legacy
Before his death in 1919, Carnegie funded more than 100 library buildings in Ohio. Some have since been torn down, a few sit vacant, and several have been converted to uses such as offices, classrooms, and meeting places. Yet a surprising number of them — about 55 — continue to survive and thrive as public libraries and are often anchors for city or county library systems.
Many of the surviving buildings have been modified over time, but most of their signature features, including East Liverpool’s rotunda and Steubenville’s marble floors, have been preserved. In fact, many a local bride has had her wedding photos taken on the handsome staircases that typify their entrances.
Those buildings often have fascinating stories to tell. Paulding’s 1916 library was the very first to cover an entire county. Marietta’s 1918 library is built atop an Indian mound. In 1903, children lined up like a bucket brigade to transfer books into Greenville’s new library. And when Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison was still in high school, she worked in Lorain’s 1904 library, which now houses the Lorain Historical Society and is called Carnegie Center.
Morrison reportedly was a painfully slow worker — preferring to read the library’s books when she was supposed to be shelving them. Of course, that seems like precisely what Andrew Carnegie probably had in mind.
For more about Carnegie libraries, click here.
