From The Modern City by the League of American Municipalities (1919) is this fine photograph of the relatively new Central Library, designed by Cass Gilbert and built in 1912.
Showing posts with label library. Show all posts
Showing posts with label library. Show all posts
St. Louis School Library, 1878
From Camille Dry's Pictorial Guide to St. Louis (1878). Here is a sketch of the St. Louis Public School Library (later, in 1884, the St. Louis Public Library) located in the Polytechnic Building of the St. Louis schools at the corner of Seventh and Chestnut streets.
The library had some 55,000 volumes and various works of art; the main library building was replaced in 1912 with Cass Gilbert's Central Library (now itself the target of a renovation and expansion plan).
Crunden Branch Library on Cass Avenue, 1909
From the Washington University Eames and Young Architectural Photographs Collection. Several images of the then-newly opened Crunden Library of the Saint Louis Public Library at 1406 North 14th Street (or 1317 Cass Avenue). According to a variety of sources, the Crunden Branch was opened in 1909 using monies of the late Andrew Carnegie, steel magnate and proponent of the Gospel of Wealth, which suggested that the successful capitalists ought to provide for the success of the underprivileged via philanthropy. Carnegie endowed thousands of libraries, from St. Louis to small towns across the nation.
The Crunden branch was a gorgeous beaux-arts building with a reading room that uplifted patrons' minds with its chandeliers and intricate molding. Costing in excess of $51,000, the branch was the first of its kind on the north side of St. Louis. While the library was in residence at the building, the Draft Board for World War One held hearings there, and the local Red Cross had meetings. It was not simply a center for learning, not just a "third place" for north side residents, but was a valuable asset to community life.
The library moved in the early 1950s and the building was sold to the Pulaski Bank (then Pulaski Savings Assocation), which vacated in the 1990s. The ubiquitous LRA demolished the building, glorious even in its decay, in August 2005.
Mr. Carnegie's dreams denied, the north side now has neither a bank nor a library, but a vacant lot at 1317 Cass.
St. Louis Mercantile Library, 1887
From Commercial and Architectural St. Louis by George Washington Orear (1888). This cut superbly depicts the six-story Mercantile Library at the southwest corner of Broadway and Locust. The building was erected on the site of the old Mercantile Library in 1887 at 510 Locust Street. At the time of the new building's construction, the library had around 2,800 members and more than 160,000 volumes circulating. The cornerstone of the building was laid by Henry Shaw, and the structure was in use as the library until 1998, when the facility moved to Normandy and on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis. [Built St. Louis] has more information on the extant structure.
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