Carnegie Library celebrating a century in North Judson
I’ve always been proud of our Indiana libraries and their connection to history.
In our little farming town of North Judson, our library was constructed in 1921 as one of the last of the “Carnegie Libraries.” Over the years, it has served as our town’s U.S. Post Office, a wartime bomb shelter and even a kindergarten classroom. Back In 1997, our residents of Starke County gathered together on a rainy Sunday afternoon to celebrate a much needed $1.5 million renovation and expansion of this Carnegie library, while promising the original history-rich design and main building structure would remain preserved.
This historic building, which for years stood as proof that one-room small town libraries aren’t extinct, was originally constructed for $15,000.
I’m honored to join my parents Chester and Peggy to be part of a grand celebration this Thursday, June 2 (which also happens to mark, what would have been the 99th birthday of Dad’s sister, my late Auntie Lottie) from 2:30-6 p.m. at the North Judson-Wayne Township Library, 208 Keller St., in my high school hometown North Judson. I’ll be included among the guest speakers, along with other visiting local authors, returning retired librarians and dignitaries, for the event and refreshments reception marking the Centennial Celebration of our prized Carnegie Library. For details, visit www.njwtpl.org or call 574-896-2841.
Of course, these original buildings, such as our structure in North Judson granted in 1917, were funded by multimillionaire, steel industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who died just two years later at 84, after giving away his fortune for the good of communities.
These original structures’ distinct brick pattern facade and ornate, concrete faux-Greek entrance are part of the architectural calling cards of the rapidly vanishing Carnegie Libraries. For example, the Porter County Library system dedicated its new Portage and Valparaiso facilities in 1996, spending $14.9 million constructing new library buildings around their county. They opted not to keep the original Carnegie structure in Valparaiso, causing quite a headline stir. They did, however, add only a wing to the existing Hebron Carnegie building, which boasts a signature “book roof ” front entrance.
Indiana received the greatest number of Carnegie library grants of any state. Between the years of 1901 to 1918, Hoosier communities received a total of 156 Carnegie library grants allowing for the creation of 164 library buildings. This amounts to a total of more than
$2.6 million in yesteryear dollars provided from the Carnegie Corporation for the various library buildings constructed between 1901 to 1922. Goshen received the first grant in 1901 and Lowell received the final grant in 1918.
Researcher and historian Laura Jones reports the Carnegie grants received by Indiana ranged in size from $5,000 given to Monterey, the community where
my oldest sister Carol lives (and at the time just under 1,000 residents) to $100,000 given to Indianapolis to construct five library branches. And though Andrew Carnegie was invited to many of the library building dedications in the state of Indiana, he attended none. The Carnegie’s library grants ended the day the United States entered World War I, on Nov. 7, 1917, and the last Carnegie building to be completed in the state of Indiana was our library landmark in North Judson, finished in 1922.
Jones reports “very few of the towns requesting grants from Andrew Carnegie were refused, as long as they agreed to his terms, yet there were some Carnegie grant requests denied, usually for administrative reasons.”
She said, for example, Greenfield, Indiana, officials requested what was thought to be an inflated Carnegie grant request, and received a response from James Bertam, Andrew Carnegie’s private secretary, stating: “A request for $30,000 to erect a library building for 5,000 people is so preposterous that Mr. Carnegie cannot give it any consideration.”
Today, of the original 164 Carnegie Library buildings in Indiana, only 98 are still operational as libraries.
Venita Cunningham, North Judson library historian and library president, said June 2, 2022 marks the true 100-year celebration for the grand opening of the
North Judson Library.
“Although the town secured the grant money in 1917, the library didn’t open until 1922 because of World War I and then the problem of inflation, all of which sounds very similar to today,” Cunningham said.
“There was an earlier smaller library in downtown North Judson on
Lane Street until the new building was finally finished at the cost of $15,000 compared to the original anticipated cost of $10,000 in 1917. While the building was open for some tours in October in 1921, the dedication ceremony didn’t happen until June 1922.”
Libraries always have, and still continue to be, life-changing.
Aviatrix Amelia Earhart spent her early years studying at the Carnegie Library in Anderson. I spent many hours of my own youth, especially during my junior high years, at the North Judson Library, often after school before and after basketball and track practice, studying, and reading newspapers and my favorite books.
During the last 18 years of his life, Andrew Carnegie gave away around
$350 million of his fortune, which is roughly $5.5 billion in today’s dollars. One of his proudest legacies was the construction of Carnegie Concert Hall in New York City.
Carnegie also ranked as one the most famous eligible bachelors in the U.S. with his vast wealth.
Born in Scotland, his early steel days were in Pittsburgh before he moved to New City, calling a vast wing of private suites at the Windsor Hotel his home for himself and his beloved mother Margaret, who never approved of any of his female companions. It was only five months after his mother’s death at age
77, that Andrew married his longtime gal-pal Louise on April 22, 1887, requiring an unusual request of that time: having his younger wife sign a prenuptial agreement, renouncing any claims to husband’s millions.
Being of Scottish decent, Andrew Carnegie loved traditional buttery Scottish
shortbread cookies. In honor of what would have been Andrew’s 150th birthday, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh hosted a shortbread cookie recipe contest in November 1985 attracting more than 100 heirloom recipe kitchen contenders, as described in an archive story of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, noting that Carnegie’s great-grandson Kenneth Miller, served at the cookie tasting judge. The winner was Ann Safley, the music and art department librarian at Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh.
“This was my concentrated effort to duplicate the finest shortbread I ever tasted, which was at a castle outside of Edinburgh, Scotland,” said Safley, whose prize was a case of Laphroaig Scotch, and whose recipe, as published in the food section of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, I’m sharing today in our honor of our town Carnegie Library celebration.
Columnist Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at pmpotempa@comhs.org or mail your questions: From the Farm, P.O. Box 68, San Pierre, IN 46374.