Chatfield's Historic Carnegie Library

Chatfield's Historic Carnegie Library. . , The roots of Chatfield's library were planted during the 1850s when a small group of book lovers purchased a collection of works for private circulation under the auspices of the "Washington Irving Literary Society," an off-shoot of the Chatfield Academy. Another nineteenth century book club called itself the Athenaeum, after it disbanded, its collection was merged into the first Chatfield public library, which was established in 1911. The first library reading room was located in rented space in one of the commercial buildings on Main Street. Enthusiasm for the library was so great that in May, 1913, the village council appointed a Library Board to manage its operation. The library was well received by the community and it was not long before the Library Board began to explore the feasibility of building a larger, more permanent home for the collections. The board submitted an application for a Carnegie grant and secured approval from the municipal government to acquire a building site. The village also agreed to levy a permanent tax for the library's maintenance, a prerequisite for Carnegie funding., The library building originally housed a public restroom for women on the basement level. This was considered a noteworthy public amenity in early twentieth-century America. Literally a place for women to rest, the room included a small parlor attached to a toilet stall, where women who ventured into public for extended periods, when visiting the library, for example or coming into town to shop, could avail themselves of a private, safe, gender-segregated space of their own., , Built in 1914, the Chatfield Public Library opened its doors on February 15, 1915. The cost of the original construction was $7550, of which $6000 was a gift from the Carnegie Institution. The building was designed by the Madison, Wisconsin-based architects Louis W. Claude (1868-1951) and Edward F. Starck (1868-1947), whose body of work included numerous Carnegie libraries in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan, and Washington. The firm was closely identified with the Prairie School movement in American architecture, which lasted from about 1905 until 1920., The Chatfield Public Library was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. It is one of over sixty Carnegie libraries built in Minnesota. A major addition designed by Rochester architect Robert Cline was constructed in 1997-98. The library also houses the Veterans Memorial Museum which displays military memorabilia., , Can you imagine being the wealthiest person in the world and then giving your money away? That is what Andrew Carnegie did. Born in Scotland, at age thirteen Carnegie immigrated to the United States where for a time he worked as a bobbin boy in a cotton factory. He quickly prospered through hard work and a genius for business; after making money in various enterprises, he struct it rich when oil was discovered on a farm he owned. By the 1880s he had built a financial empire through his ownership of railroads and steel mills. After retiring in 1901, the industrialist felt a moral obligation to become a philanthropist and founded the Carnegie Institution, through which he divested more than $350 million of his private fortune before his death in 1919. His favorite charity was the funding of free public libraries and to this end Carnegie foundation grants financed construction of over twenty-five hundred libraries, including 1689 in the United States., "A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never failing spring in the desert" – Andrew Carnegie