Civic Pride in a Lost America: Library Postcards
Carnegie Libraries of New York*
Cities A-J
*Excluding Long Island
**Excluding the Five NYC boroughs
Unlike many states, there is no large website that lists all the New York libraries. New York appears to differ from many states in that its library districts correlate with its school districts.
Amsterdam
Valentine & Sons card,
never mailed.
Valentine & Sons card, mailed in 1911.
Compared with the city website photo,
the colors are quite accurate.
Lusterchrome card, ca. 1950.
1902 Carnegie grant. Still in use.
However, from my readings of early newspapers, The Day Book, 25 February 1915, mentions a plan to convert the Carnegie building into a jail. Fortunately, thoughtful heads prevailed.
Binghamton
1902 Carnegie grant. Replaced 100 years later. The Library continues as the Broome County Public Library. I don't know the fate of the Carnegie building.
Card printed in Great Britain.
Bolivar
1909 grant: dated 1910. Still in use.
This was the acme of artistic color printing. So braggeth the Williamsport Paper Company.
Canastota
Founded 1896 and moved into this Carnegie building in 1903, according to the library's exuberant web site. Not listed as a Carnegie building in Bobinski.
The full history page adds such wonderful tidbits as the original price of the lot ($900) and the 1951 replacement of 'antiquated' library furnishings during the first major renovation.
Catskill
(L) Older, monochrome card.
(R) On this card, the Neoclassical building covered with ivy is the library. The light colored building is the Masonic Temple.
(L) Photo postcard, mailed in 1910.
1901 Carnegie grant.
The Library does not seem to be in as bucolic a setting today.
Chatham
1901 grant: opened in 1905 and still in use.
The Library even has a Tiffany window.
​
(L) Pandrocal Post Card, mailed 1920.
(R) Litho-Chrome card, never mailed
Dunkirk
Printed in Germany for S.H. Knox & Co., and mailed in 1909.
Never-mailed Albertype card,
made in Brooklyn.
Curt Teich
'C.T. American Art Colored.'
I believe that this is the Chautauqua County Dunkirk, both from on-line clues and from the message on the card (L). This library was well-established before the 1904 Carnegie grant.
The building is still in use.
Elmira
Colourpicture linen-finish card.
Early 1916 grant. Replaced a previous iteration in 1923.
I can't explain the gap between the grant and the fait accompli, except for a pesky war.
Replaced in 1979.
Fleischmanns (Skene Memorial Library)
In one of George Bobinski's errors, Skene Memorial Library's Carnegie grant was overlooked. According to the Library's history page, the grant seems to date from between 1898 and 1901, but Wikipedia tags it as a 1901 grant.
Evidently, Mrs. Skene had some sort of connection with Mr. Carnegie, and the early date allowed a wooden, hard-to-heat building with a lighthouse-like front turret.
​
The linen-finish postcard was printed by Metropolitan on linen-finish paper for the Kingston News Service.
Fulton
Information from Waymarking.
One notable fact is that its foundation stones came from the prior building on the site.
1902 grant. Still in use, and on the National Registers of Historic Places.
(L) Mailed to postcard collector Anna May Kennedy, of Rib Lake, Wisconsin, in 1907.
(R) Wm. Jubb post card.
Gloversville
1904 Carnegie facility, designed by Albert Randolph Ross. The Beaux-Arts wonder was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. The library was in grave financial trouble in the mid-2000s, was chartered by the New York Board of Regents, and changed to being the Gloversville Public Library.
Valentine & Sons' Publishing post card, mailed 1913. The arch reads Gloversville Free Library; immediately above the door reads 'Carnegie.'
​
Hornell
(L) Mogel Publishing card, mailed in 1911.
(R) Mailed in 1922.
Early 1903 grant. On the National Register of Historic Places, but it's uncertain if it's still in use as a library.
