The campaign to restore, renovate and revitalize the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall has captured the hopes, dreams and support of Carnegie, surrounding Chartiers Valley communities and beyond. Launched by the Chartiers Valley Partnership in November 2003, the campaign has raised more than $7.5 million. Funding has come from federal, state, county, local government and foundations. Remarkably, individuals and businesses from Carnegie and nearby communities have contributed nearly a quarter of the funds raised to date.
Indeed, Carnegie’s support of this campaign to restore the Library & Music Hall has assumed almost legendary proportions. This campaign began with an anonymous $500,000 challenge grant. The challenge was that Carnegie and neighboring communities must contribute a dollar for dollar match – in ten months’ time – to meet a September 30th deadline and secure the half million grant. In mid-September 2004, the campaign was just $45,000 short when disaster hit – the devastating flood that ravaged Carnegie and other Chartiers Valley communities. Astonishingly, instead of stopping the challenge in its tracks, Carnegie contributed $60,000 in the two weeks after the flood to meet and exceed the challenge.
The Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall has served its community since 1901. The Library was built with money provided by the famed industrialist. Although Andrew Carnegie’s name is internationally associated with libraries and he ultimately went on to build more than 2500 of them, the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall is one of only five libraries in the world that the philanthropist endowed.
The ACFL&MH is distinguished not only by its age and architecture, but by the fact that the town it graces was named for Mr. Carnegie. In 1894, the boroughs of Mansfield and Chartiers consolidated to become one – Carnegie. The Andrew Carnegie Free Library – the only Carnegie Library that bears the philanthropist’s first name – was Mr. Carnegie’s thank you to the borough took his name.
The “Carnegie Carnegie” is beautiful, Italianate structure, situated on a hill above Carnegie’s Main Street. As with a few other historic Carnegie institutions, library does not adequately describe the facility. In addition to serving as a fine community Library of 20,000 volumes, the ACFL&MH houses a reception hall, a gymnasium, and an acoustically superb, 500-seat Music Hall – patterned after Carnegie Hall in New York – that is serendipitously located “where Broadway meets Main Street.”
The facility is also home to a genuine national treasure: its Civil War room. Local veterans of that war custom-furnished a second floor room at the ACFL&MH, using it from 1906 until the late 1930s for meetings and to house their collection of flags, books, prints and relics. When the last members of the Thomas Espy Post of the Grand Army of the Republic died, the room was locked and essentially forgotten for nearly 50 years.
Sadly, the endowment model was not a good one; funding ran out. In the mid-1990s the 35,000 sq. ft. Library & Music Hall had $136 in its checking account after payroll. Suffering from age, water damage and the neglect caused by decades of deeply entrenched poverty, the ACFL&MH was in a perilous state. There was talk of tearing down the facility.
Today the Library & Music Hall’s beautiful historic landmark facility is structurally sound, weather proof, accessible and looks lovelier than it has in decades. Comfortable new seats were added to the Music Hall in 2009; the Espy Post re-opened following a meticulous restoration in 2010; and the Library was air conditioned in 2011. Just as importantly, improvements to Library & Music Hall services have kept pace with upgrades to the building. The “Carnegie Carnegie” is vibrant and valued by the region as well as the community it so proudly serves.
Critical work remains to be done: air conditioning the full facility; interior restoration of the Library and Music Hall; code and life safety upgrades; improved parking, landscaping and exterior lighting.
However, the Chartiers Valley Partnership’s job is finished. At the end of 2011 the CVP turned over full responsibility for the capital campaign’s completion to the Board of Trustees of the Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall.
The Andrew Carnegie Free Library & Music Hall looks forward to completing this extraordinary undertaking. It is forever grateful to the Chartiers Valley Partnership and for the ongoing outpouring of community support that is the cornerstone of the capital campaign’s success and the “Carnegie Carnegie” bright future.
