The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is the

public library A public library is a library, most often a lending library, that is accessible by the general public and is usually funded from public sources, such as taxes. It is operated by librarians and library paraprofessionals, who are also Civil servic ...

system in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

. Its main branch is located in the

Oakland Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major West Coast port, Oakland is ...

neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and it has 19 branch locations throughout the city. Like hundreds of other Carnegie libraries, the construction of the main library, which opened in 1895, and several neighborhood branches, was funded by industrialist

Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie ( , ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the History of the iron and steel industry in the United States, American steel industry in the late ...

. The Pittsburgh area houses the first branches in the United States. The Pittsburgh Photographic Library is a

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

repository held by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh of over 50,000 prints and negatives relating to history of Pittsburgh.

History

The City of Pittsburgh was originally home to eight Carnegie libraries constructed at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1881, Andrew Carnegie offered a US$250,000 grant to the city for the construction of a public library on the condition that the city provided the land and annual funding for the maintenance of the property. The city declined Carnegie's initial offer out of concern that a publicly funded library was not a state-sanctioned use of public tax funds. With the passing of several years and the state legislature's endorsement of the project, however, the city reconsidered the offer and reached out to Carnegie in the interest of accepting his grant. In 1890, the City of Pittsburgh accepted an expanded grant of $1 million for the building of the main library in Oakland and five branches in the neighborhoods of Lawrenceville, West End, Wylie Avenue (

Hill District The Hill District is a grouping of historically African American neighborhoods in the City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Beginning in the years leading up to World War I, "the Hill" was the cultural center of black life in the city and a major ce ...

), Mount Washington, and Hazelwood. While the initial plan only called for those five branches, the city later received another three Carnegie libraries in the East Liberty, South Side, and Homewood neighborhoods. Construction on the main library was finished in 1895 while the branch libraries were constructed over the following fifteen years, ending with the completion of the Homewood branch in 1910. Six of the original Carnegie library branch locations continue to serve as public libraries in their respective neighborhoods: Lawrenceville, West End, Mount Washington, Hazelwood, South Side, and Homewood. The East Liberty branch was demolished in the 1960s as part of a redevelopment plan, and the Wylie Avenue branch was moved to a new location in 1982. In January 2022, the 201 members of the United Library Workers (ULW), the union of library staff, which organized with United Steelworkers in 2019, ratified their first contract with the library's management. Environmental service workers and drivers had already been unionized with the

Teamsters The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) is a trade union, labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of the Team Drivers International Union and the Teamsters National Union, the union now represents a di ...

and SEIU.

Branches/Locations

* Allegheny * Allegheny County Law Library * Beechview * Brookline * Carrick * Downtown and Business * East Liberty * Hazelwood * Hill District * Homewood * Knoxville * Lawrenceville * Library of Accessible Media for Pennsylvanians (formerly Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped) (Bloomfield) * Main (Oakland) * Mt. Washington * Sheraden * South Side * Squirrel Hill * West End * Woods Run

Partnership with suburban branches

For decades, CLP has partnered with suburban area branches, and, in 2014, talks were started seeking innovative ways to combine some services.

Theft case

In 2018, the ''

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette The ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', also known simply as the PG, is the largest newspaper serving Greater Pittsburgh, metropolitan Pittsburgh in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Descended from the ''Pittsburgh Gazette'', established in 1786 as the fi ...

'' reported that nearly 320 rare books, maps, engravings, and other items had been stolen from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's main branch in Oakland, which houses the system's rare book collection. The items, including a 1787 document signed by Thomas Jefferson, were valued at more than $8 million. In July 2018, a former library archivist and a Pittsburgh-area bookseller were charged with the thefts, which took place over a period of two decades. It was one of the largest rare-book theft cases in history. According to the criminal complaints detailing alleged scheme, the archivist said that he "often removed items from the Oliver Room at the library's main branch in Oakland by carrying individual plates ndmaps in manila folders, or for books or larger items, by brazenly rolling them up and walking out." The archivist is alleged to have turned the rare items over to the bookseller, who would then sell them through his store.

References

External links