Carnegie's Last Library: Wyoming Avenue Branch

The last library funded by Andrew Carnegie was dedicated on this spot on October twenty-ninth, nineteen thirty, as the Wyoming Avenue Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia. Carnegie, the Pittsburgh steel titan who sold his company to J.P.

Morgan for four hundred eighty million dollars in nineteen oh one, spent much of his retirement giving that fortune away. He endowed more than two thousand five hundred libraries worldwide, believing free public access to books was the surest ladder out of poverty. Philadelphia alone received dozens of branches.

This Wyoming Avenue branch was the last library built with Carnegie money, opened more than a decade after his death, closing a chapter in one of history's greatest philanthropic campaigns. The building still stands as a neighborhood anchor, a quiet monument to the idea that learning should cost nothing.