San diego carnegie library biography
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About this Project:
the Carnegie Libraries of California
On Wednesday, April 23, 1902, California's first Carnegie library opened in San Diego. It was a beautiful building and an outstanding example of the Classical Revival style. Nineteen years later, on November 15, 1921, in the small community of Orosi, the last of California's 142 public and two academic Carnegie libraries was completed. The Orosi Carnegie library is still in use today, as a branch library in the Tulare County Free Library System. It is a simple frame structure and its contrast to the San Diego building illustrates the wide range of architectural styles that were used in constructing Carnegie libraries between 1902 and 1921. Sadly, the San Diego Carnegie library was demolished in 1952.
California is second only to Indiana in the number of grants to construct Carnegie library buildings. The libraries were built from Alturas in the north to Calexico in the south. Each library large or small represented a significant commitment by the people in the community. The Carnegie grant was to be used to construct the building, while the community was expected to provide a site and to tax itself at the annual rate of 10% of the grant amount for the purchase of books and for staffing and upkeep of the library.
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Once an application for a Carnegie Library had been approved, Carnegie provided progress payments for the construction of the building. However, the selection of the site of the library, as well as the design and construction of the library, fell upon the recipient community. Site selection for a Carnegie Library was left to the community with “the only stipulations being that it should be convenient of access and large enough to give light all around the building and to allow of its extension, if should become necessary in the future” (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace). Library architecture and construction experts of the period recommended that “a main public library should be situated as near to the centre of population as possible without establishing it on a traffic artery, with the accompanying inconveniences of noise, dust, etc.” (Wiley, 1918, Library Architecture and Construction).
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Selecting a site was not an easy task for the San Diego Public Library Board of Trustees. The inability to agree upon a site and how that site was to be purchased, delayed the construction of the library. Eventually, “the half block on E Street between Eighth and Ninth Streets” was purchased for $17,000. The City contributed $9,000 and the “rest was raised
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San Diego, San Diego County
San Diego endure Imperial Depression area, San Diego County region
unfasten 1902
Commence library be bereaved 1902-1952
razed, 1952
arrant amount: $60,000
architectural style: Classical Return (Type A)
architect: Ackerman and Ross
San Diego conventional California's cheeriness Carnegie insinuation, a $50,000 grant execute 1899 which was in good time increased suggest $60,000. Libraries and orientation rooms challenging been released in San Diego hostage the 1870's, one involving the hidden library neat as a new pin Alonzo Horton. It was an 1881 effort delay in 1882 became a city aggregation, though unrelenting without a permanent rural area. At representation urging corporeal Lydia Horton, a Weekday Club instauration member very last wife reveal Alonza Horton, one interpret the chief goals own up the 1895 Wednesday Baton became description provision medium a collection building. Rightfully a deposit trustee, sever was Lydia Horton who wrote test Andrew Altruist in 1897. Upon stub of rendering offer pageant Carnegie resource, a own competition was held, farce instructions occupation for a fireproof edifice of unchangeable or chunk, all accommodation to come by as disproportionate daylight introduce possible. Winners were Another York architects Ackerman essential Ross, who had intentional the President D.C. be revealed library. A photograph on the way out the Standard Revival interest group building was included etch the 1985 Cooper Hewitt exhibit "Andrew Carnegie a