Posts Tagged ‘Carnegie Library’

Last summer the collections of the San Diego Central Library moved to a new building at 330 Park Blvd. For the past several months the staff of Special Collections has been busily unpacking and arranging boxes of materials once relegated to the basement of our old building. Among reams of material, we make discoveries. Below is a forgotten architectural rendering of the proposed Carnegie Library. The completed structure, designed by the New York firm of Ackerman and Ross, was dedicated in April 1902.

Ackerman & Ross, Architects

The public library will be open to the public evenings and Sundays, even if it requires the use of an axe, a la Carrie Nation style. –City Councilmen Percy Benbough, Jan. 20, 1917.

In 1917, San Diego librarians and the public waged war with the City Council over the library hours. Who would back down? The Library Mutiny.

San Diego's Carnegie Library at 8th and E Streets.

Believe it or not, there was a time when the San Diego Public Library was open twelve hours a day, Monday through Saturday, plus Sunday afternoon. The librarians took only three holidays: Thanksgiving Day, Christmas, and July 4th.  One of my favorite library photographs is shown here below. Those were the days . . .

In the early 1900s, San Diegans expected and received generous public hours at the Central Library.

Art gallery in the Carnegie Library.

As a target for art thieves, the Public Library would seem an unlikely place. Nevertheless, janitor Robert Butler had an unwelcome surprise when he opened the doors of the library on Friday morning, February 5, 1909. As Butler climbed the stairs to the art gallery on the second floor, he was shocked by the sight of empty picture frames strewn along the baseboards. Fifteen oil paintings on loan from prominent local artists had disappeared. . .

The story of the Carnegie Library Art Heist.