Minnesota’s Carnegie Libraries After 100 Years.

 

Organizer:  Greg Gaut

Date: Mar 23, 2024

Time: 10:30 am - 12:00 pm

Location:  Shoreview Library
4560 Victoria St N
Shoreview, MN 55126

In the early 1900s, Andrew Carnegie funded the construction of over 1600 libraries in this country, 66 of which were in Minnesota. The first half of the talk will describe the Carnegie library program and its impact on Minnesota; the second half will assess the extent to which the libraries have survived after more than a century.

We will touch on themes of philanthropy, architecture, accessibility, historic preservation, and of course, the importance of libraries in American society.  Particular attention will be paid to how a Carnegie library has to be transformed so that it can continue to serve the community. Illustrated by historic and contemporary photos from around the state.

Greg Gaut is emeritus faculty at Saint Mary’s University in Winona, where he taught European and Russian history. Since 2012, he has worked as a historic preservation consultant. He and his wife, Marsha Neff, are regular contributors to Minnesota History, and two of their articles won the David Gebhard Award for the best article on Minnesota’s built environment. A lover of libraries, he has published Laird’s Legacy: A History of the Winona Public Library and Reinventing the People’s Library, a history of St. Paul’s Arlington Hills Public Library. The latter, a Carnegie library, is now the East Side Freedom Library. He is working on a book about the Minnesota home front during World War I. One result of this research, the article “Hardware Store Sedition: The Case of Charles W. Anding,” won the Solon J. Buck Award for the best article in Minnesota History for 2020.