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Carnegie Library of Midland

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1916, Frederick J. Merrick. 61 9th St.

This is a classic Carnegie branch library, essentially one large room with a fireplace nook to the right of the entrance in the children's library and an adult reading room to the left. The librarian's office is located in the center at the head of the entrance stair.

A local couple, William and Lucy Hart, applied to the Andrew Carnegie Foundation in 1914 for a $20,000 grant to build the library. The land was donated by the Midland Improvement Company, the real estate arm of Crucible Steel, which between 1906 and 1936 owned nearly all the homes in Midland. Set one block north of the commercial street in town, the library is a transitional site from the commercial to the residential portions of Midland. When the school board agreed to manage the library and the borough to support it with tax dollars, the design of the library's basement was raised to allow larger windows so it could be used as the library for the Midland High School. The structure has a residential scale and Tudor Revival touches in the leaded glass and casement windows, and in the building's crisp angles. Irregularly coursed sandstone trimmed with limestone and the steeply gabled roof lend the building the air of a chapel.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Lu Donnelly et al.
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Data

What's Nearby

United Steelworkers of America, Local 1212
First Energy (Duquesne Light, Beaver Valley Power Station)
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David Littell House (Chestnut Flats)

Citation

Lu Donnelly et al., "Carnegie Library of Midland", [Midland, Pennsylvania], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/PA-01-BE35.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of PA vol 1

Buildings of Pennsylvania: Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania, Lu Donnelly, H. David Brumble IV, and Franklin Toker. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2010, 156-157.

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