CARNEGIE LIBRARIES

Andrew Carnegie was a split personality. Driven by the desire for money and power, he was a ferocious competitor and a calculating exploiter of labor. On the other hand, he had experienced poverty and ultimately gave most of his immense fortune away for libraries, music halls and foundations that dispensed benevolence. Many library buildings in the county exhibit his belief in education and promote his memory. Three stand out in labor history:

Braddock – The first great library dedicated (1889) by Carnegie was in the town where he erected his first great steel mill. Site of the crushing defeat of the British/ American army by the French and Indians in 1755, this library’s struggle back from near destruction in the 1970s gave hope to a whole community. 419 Library St, Braddock.

Allegheny City (now North Side) -This edifice was
a tribute to the library of Colonel James Anderson who made his books available to working-class youth and opened a world of possibility to Andrew Carnegie. The statue of the worker as scholar dedicated to Anderson graces the cover of this booklet. By the New Haslett Theater, 6 Allegheny Square, North Side.

Homestead – This was the library sealed in blood. At the library dedication in Braddock, Carnegie said that unionized Homestead would only get a library when their workers became partners with capital. In 1898, six years after the bloody Battle of Homestead, Carnegie returned for the last time to the region to dedicate the Homestead Library. Six thousand workmen were lined up hat-in-hand along the road as 1,500 invited guests passed in carriages. 510 E 10th Ave., Munhall.