On March 12, 1901, Andrew Carnegie, one of the
world’s foremost industrialists, offered the city of New York $5.2
million for the construction of sixty-five branch libraries. The
Scottish immigrant’s fortune eventually would establish many more
libraries and charitable foundations.
The man who enters a library is in the best society this
world affords; the good and the great welcome him, surround him, and
humbly ask to be allowed to become his servants…
Andrew Carnegie, excerpt from addressExternal at the dedication of The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, November 5, 1895. In The Bulletin of the American Iron and Steel Association, November 10, 1895.
Carnegie Library, Montgomery, Ala. c1906. Detroit Publishing Company. Prints & Photographs DivisionBorn in 1835, Carnegie immigrated to the United States in 1848 with
his parents. Working in American industry and making shrewd investments,
he amassed a fortune before the age of thirty. In the 1870s, he noted
the potential of the steel industry and founded J. Edgar Thomson Steel Works
near Pittsburgh, which eventually evolved into the Carnegie Steel
Company. The company boomed, and in 1901, Carnegie sold it to financier J. P. Morgan for $480 million, received $250 million as his personal share, and retired. Carnegie devoted the rest of his life to writing and philanthropic
activities. Believing that any accumulated wealth should be distributed
in the form of public endowments, Carnegie founded 2,509 libraries in
the English-speaking world, including ones in Michigan, New York, Ohio, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. He also established several trusts and helped found Carnegie Mellon University. At the time of his death in 1919, Carnegie had given away over $350 million.
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