Building Carnegie
To say that Librarian Azariah Smith Root (pictured) had given the prospect of a new library building a lot of prior thought is evidenced by a twenty-three page description covering the layout and contents of the new library which covers every detail imaginable.
Page one of Root's statement regarding the proposed new library.
Laying the cornerstone for the new building in 1907.
Ongoing construction of the Carnegie Library.
Librarian Root had constant interaction with the architects, Patton and Miller, and had input on many details.
Built of Amherst sandstone, the new four-story structure featured self supporting book stacks with glass floors, a spacious reading room, seminar rooms, a rare book room, as well as space for a town library including the novelty of a separate children's room.
View looking south west showing the attachment for book stacks at the rear of the building.
The dedication of the new library took place on June 23, 1908. Reminiscing about the event in 1970, Keyes Metcalf, then a library student employee, wrote: The dedication “was followed by an open house in the evening to which all members of the college were invited. As a result, all the lights in all the rooms, including the book stack, were turned on. The collection had not yet been moved into the library, so anyone was free to go back and forth to all parts of the building. Unfortunately, the main electrical circuits were not adapted to the complete lighting of the building, and as darkness descended . . . the lights went out just as all visitors were about to gather in the big reading room. A telephone call to the building maintenance brought the head of that staff to the library. He found that the main contact at the northwest corner of the ground floor had burned out. With great difficulty he pulled it out and replaced it with another. It heated up and the lights went out again after fifteen or twenty minutes, and he spent the rest of the evening shifting the fragile connections as they heated up.”
Carnegie Library as seen from the south west, next to Council Hall (to the east) which no longer exists. Council Hall housed the Seminary, a function later taken over by the Graduate School of Theology in Bosworth Hall built on the same site. The Graduate School of Theology moved to Vanderbuilt University in 1966.