Homestead Library & Athletic Club
Carnegie of Homestead
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| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| Type | Public |
| Established | 1896 |
| Location | 510 East 10th Ave., Munhall, Pennsylvania |
| Collection | |
| Size | 34,000 |
| Website | http://www.CarnegieofHomestead.org |
| Designated | 1989 |
The Carnegie Library of Homestead is a public library founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1896. It is one of 2,509 Carnegie libraries worldwide 1,689 built in the United States. It was the sixth Library commissioned by Carnegie in the U.S. and the seventh to open. Completed in November 1898, it is the third oldest Carnegie library in continuous operation in its original structure in the U.S. after the Main Branch and Lawrenceville Branch of Pittsburgh.
The building houses a library holding over 34,000 volumes, a 1,000-seat music hall, and an athletic club with a heated indoor pool. The Carnegie Library of Homestead is an independent entity; it is not a "branch" of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, which operates one main facility and 19 branches within the city of Pittsburgh.
The library was constructed on a hill in (then Homestead, Pennsylvania) Munhall, Pennsylvania overlooking the Homestead Steel Works, the site of an 1892 labor strike where Pinkerton agents fought with union workers, resulting in 16 deaths.
A library had been under consideration for several years before the strike, but unlike those at Carnegie's Homestead plant, laborers at the Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock had capitulated to his wage concession demands in 1887; the Carnegie Free Library of Braddock was founded the following year. "Our works at Homestead are not to us as our works at Edgar Thomson. Our men there are not partners," Carnegie said.
Groundbreaking for the $300,000 project took place in April 1896. The French Renaissance design was the work of Pittsburgh architects Frank Alden and Alfred Harlow. Contractor William Miller and Sons used Pompein brick for construction of the 220 by 132 foot facility.
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