Etowah Carnegie Library
Tennessee
The small town of Etowah in McMinn County owed its library to one of the most unusual philanthropies in American history. Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born steel baron who became the country's richest man, spent the last two decades of his life giving that fortune away. His chosen instrument was the public library.
Between eighteen eighty-three and nineteen nineteen, Carnegie funded two thousand five hundred nine libraries worldwide, about two thirds of them in the United States. Small towns across the country applied to the Carnegie Corporation, and if approved, received a grant on one condition: the community had to commit to maintaining the building with local tax dollars.
Etowah received eight thousand dollars in nineteen fifteen and built its Carnegie library soon after. It was part of a transformation of American public life, the idea that any citizen, no matter their income, deserved free access to books. Carnegie called it the best gift a community could receive.
