The Defiance Public Library is a historic Carnegie library located in

Defiance, Ohio Defiance is a city in Defiance County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. The population was 17,066 at the 2020 census. It is located at the confluence of the Auglaize and Maumee rivers about southwest of Toledo and northeast of For ...

. It was built in 1904 with funds from

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 ...

and was designed by architects

Wing & Mahurin Wing & Mahurin was an architectural firm of Fort Wayne, Indiana. Its principal partners were John F. Wing (1852-1947) and Marshall S. Mahurin (1857-1939), who were partners until 1907. Together with Guy M. Mahurin (1877-1941) they worked also as ...

. The

Tudor Revival Tudor Revival architecture, also known as mock Tudor in the UK, first manifested in domestic architecture in the United Kingdom in the latter half of the 19th century. Based on revival of aspects that were perceived as Tudor architecture, in rea ...

-style building includes stained glass, a red sandstone façade, and picture windows overlooking the junction the

Maumee Maumee may refer to: Places: * Maumee Township, Allen County, Indiana * Maumee, Ohio, a city in Lucas County * Maumee River, a river in northwestern Ohio and northeastern Indiana, United States * Maumee Bay, Ohio, on Lake Erie * Maumee State Fores ...

and

Auglaize River The Auglaize River ( Shawnee: ''Kathinakithiipi'') is a tributary of the Maumee River in northwestern Ohio in the United States. It drains a primarily rural farming area in the watershed of Lake Erie. The name of the river was derived from the ...

s and of the Defiance Fort Grounds. The building was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1985.

History

The notion of a library like service was first devised by a formation of twenty-five men in 1867, determined to better the intellectual prosperity of the residents in Defiance, Ohio.“About This Collection”, Defiance Public Library System Digital Archive, Ohio Memory, Accessed October 13, 2024, https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll20#:~:text=About%20the%20Defiance%20Public%20Library%20System%3A&text=In%201904%20Andrew%20Carnegie%20donated,opened%20on%20July%204%2C%201905. While these men worked towards furthering the education of the city, official library services were not performed until the 1870s. In the year 1873, these men established what was known as the Defiance Library Association (DLA), which would begin the first ever official library services for the city of Defiance.“A Brief History of DPLS”, Defiance Public Library System, Accessed October 13, 2024, https://www.defiancelibrary.org/history/. This association would spend the next few decades providing an assortment of library services, for a summable fee, despite not possessing any sort of solid location for their collection. From this point forward, library services would be provided in a number of various local buildings and businesses for the next thirty years. With a distinct lack of security for the library’s collection, the members of the DLA wrote to the Carnegie Foundation in order to procure the funds to establish a permanent location. In 1904, the DLA was gifted the sum of $22,000 towards the building of the public library’s first permanent residence on the Fort Defiance grounds. Building began immediately and would finish, open for public use on July 4, 1905.

References

Library buildings completed in 1904 Libraries on the National Register of Historic Places in Ohio Tudor Revival architecture in Ohio Buildings and structures in Defiance County, Ohio National Register of Historic Places in Defiance County, Ohio

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 ...

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