Paris Carnegie Public Library

About this property

The Paris Carnegie Public Library was opened to the public on June 24, 1904. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places and is still home to the Paris Public Library at 207 South Main Street in Paris, Illinois, located in Edgar County. The 1904 establishment of the Paris Carnegie Public Library came out of a small library started by the Paris Women's Club and facilitated by an $18,000 grant from Andrew Carnegie. The building was dedicated on June 24, 1904, at the Christian Church in Paris, following the dedication celebration the library was first opened to the public for inspection. The library, upon opening, was home to over 3,000 volumes. The process of securing a Carnegie Library for Paris was described by Dr. E.O. Laughlin, a member of the city council in Paris when the library was granted to the city. "The idea of securing a Carnegie Library for Paris crystallized in the Ferris drug store, which served the purpose of a popular club in the ‘90’s and later. It was presided over by the genial Dr. Edmund Ferris, veteran of the Civil War, who talked well, listened better, and whose hospitality was such that he never thought of closing the store as long as one guest would remain," Laughlin said. This "club" gathered at the drug store where it was determined that the way to get Carnegie to support a library in Paris was through the written word. Ferris undertook the task of writing the first of several letters to the Carnegie Foundation. The city levied a two mill tax, which was 10% of the $18,000 grant provided by Carnegie. The mayor at the time, Dr. Z.T. Baum appointed a nine-member library board which was sworn in on April 2, 1902. The appointees were to serve a term of three years. The board established a committee in charge of securing options for various possible building sites for the new library. By May 6, 1902, the present-day site, 207 S. Main Street, of the library was selected over six other possible locations at a cost of $6,500. During the month of May it was also learned that the grant would be remitted in installments of $3,000 or $4,000 upon written request of two board members. On August 8, 1902, the architectural firm of Charles Henry & Son out of Akron, Ohio was selected to design the building. It wasn't until February 17, 1903, that the local contractor H.B. Newman was awarded the building contract with a bid of the grant amount, $18,000 and work began at the construction site. On June 4, 1904, the library board met in the newly constructed building for the first time. The library joined 81 other structures in Illinois that Carnegie grants made possible. By the 1920s over 1,700 Carnegie libraries had been established throughout the United States. The Paris Library was built before the time that Carnegie and his secretary James Bertram began to restrict the amount of leeway communities were given in designed their Carnegie libraries. By 1908 Carnegie and Bertram began exercising more control over library plans. Carnegie's plans generally included brick buildings, for low maintenance, no fireplaces, for they wasted space, basements (necessitating stairs). Though the Paris Library was built four years before these plans were outlined the building is still pretty typical of Carnegie library buildings.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

More in Edgar County

Historic places, battles, and census history across Edgar County.

More historic places in Illinois

Browse all historic places in Illinois.

Conflict records

Explore 19,000+ military engagements across American history.

Illinois history

Colonial settlement, territorial period, and statehood narrative.