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Another spur to library building during these last years has been the Carnegie gifts. Their number and wide range, furnishing at the same time an incentive and a climax to both private beneficence and public liberality, finally convinced architects that in library buildings of all sizes and various purposes they had a theme worthy of their best work and highest genius. Mr. Carnegie’s first Public Free Library was founded in 1889, less than quarter of a century ago. Up to March, 1911, he had given funds for 2062 public and 115 college libraries.

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This rapid sketch has gleaned the records to show how the housing of libraries has grown through centuries toward a rapid development in our own age.

The Present.

The Next Quarter Century.

In the first place, a swarm of buildings. Private beneficence, already aroused and stimulated, will continue for at least another generation even after Carnegie shall pass on to his reward. Public opinion in a large part of our country has come to believe in the library as it believes in the schools. Small libraries will follow railway stations into all growing and ambitious towns. Communities now inert will awake and, as instruments for good, demand libraries to stand beside their churches. The buildings of today will soon burst their bounds in the flood of library progress, and require enlargement or replacement.