
“Thank You, Mr. Carnegie” Upstate New York’s Carnegie Libraries!
Andrew Carnegie, once the richest man in the world, was worth hundreds of millions of dollars when he passed away on August 11, 1919 at the age of 83. His fortune during the final years of his life was estimated to somewhere north of $400,000,000.
Carnegie was not worth nearly that much when he died, however. He had set out on a forthright path to attempt to give all of his money away during his twilight years. And, by gosh, he almost did it. He shed more than $350,000,000 of his fortune (about 90%) to his favorite charities, organizations, and foundations. In today's dollars the Scottish-American industrialist got rid of ten billion dollars of his wealth.
To his everlasting credit, one of his pet projects was getting public libraries into the hands of small-town America. He financed thousands of libraries across the land (and world) and many of them were in small towns. He financed 107 Carnegie Libraries in New York State alone with many of them located in rural Upstate New York. This list looks at a gallery of a selection of still standing Carnegie Libraries across the Upstate region. These all came about during a fruitful 25-year period in Mr. Carnegie's life at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.
As you can see, these were not just ordinary structures. If a town successfully applied for a new Carnegie Library, they usually ended up being one of the grandest buildings around. And many of them are not only still active public libraries but are also still elegant windows to the past.
Check It Out! Upstate New York's Fabulous, Fantastic Carnegie Libraries
Gallery Credit: Chuck D'Imperio
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Gallery Credit: Chuck D'Imperio