Council Grove, Kansas, Carnegie Library Photo Print

"Council Grove, Kansas, Carnegie Library" By Catherine Sherman. The one-story, brick eclectic Neo-Classical Carnegie Library building sits on the south side of Main Street in Council Grove, Kansas. Red rose bushes flank the entrance steps. Main Street is a section of the old Santa Fe Trail. Council Grove is a Santa Fe Trail National Historic Landmark town. The library, built in 1916, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 25, 1987. Now the Carnegie library building is the home of the Morris County Historical Society. Sixty-three Carnegie funded libraries were built in Kansas during the first three decades of the Twentieth Century; four of these libraries were built on college campuses. In most cases, the Carnegie funded library represented the community's first library building although many Kansas communities had book clubs and library organizations well before the Carnegie Corporation Library Building Program was founded. Industrialist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) and the Carnegie Corporation significantly influenced the development and expansion of public library systems worldwide. Between 1886 and 1921 Carnegie funds assisted in the construction of 1,681 city and 108 college libraries in the United States.