Carnegie Library In Lusk, Wyoming, Is Worth The Visit

Wyoming, it might surprise some Americans to know, leads the nation in library visits per capita at 3.82 visits per person.

Not even Washington, D.C., beats the Cowboy State in that realm. The nation’s capital is second, at 3.78 visits per person, according to the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services.

D.C. folks might see Wyoming as a flyover state, but Wyomingites appreciate their big open space and, clearly from the statistic, they also appreciate the peculiar magic of libraries, where so much wondrous enormity is crammed into the tiny space of a book.

Those who lust for libraries in Wyoming will find one of the best in an unlikely place.

Lusk, seat of the Cowboy State’s least populated county, has one of Wyoming’s few remaining Carnegies that is still a library — and one that Alliance for Historic Wyoming’s Board President, Andrea Graham, finds the most charming.

“The detailing on that building is just beautiful,” she said. “The different colored bricks, the arched windows — it’s one of my favorite Carnegies in the state because it’s so distinctive.”

It’s also the only Carnegie in Wyoming with a corner entrance.

While 16 Carnegie libraries were built in Wyoming from 1889 to 1919, just 10 remain.

The Carnegie libraries in Cheyenne, Casper, Sheridan, Cody, Douglas and Basin have all been destroyed.

The architecture of the Rock Springs and Wheatland Carnegies has been dramatically altered, but the buildings are still used as libraries.

The Carnegies in Buffalo and Evanston have become museums, while the Thermopolis Carnegie houses city offices.

Buffalo’s needs extensive repair to save its sandstone structure. Likewise, Green River’s, now vacant, also needs extensive repair

Out of 16 Carnegie libraries, just five continue as a library today.

Lusk’s 105-year-old Carnegie is one of them.

Andrew Carnegie And The Gospel Of Wealth

Carnegie became the world’s richest man in 1901 after selling Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan for half a billion dollars. His was a true “rags to riches” story.

The Scottish immigrant came to America dirt-poor as a kid, working as what was then known as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill. His job was to fill bobbins with thread and oil them up, before carrying them to workers stationed at looms. His pay was the grand sum of $1.20 per week.

When Carnegie couldn’t afford a $2 subscription fee to access the local library, he sent a letter to the library administrator pleading for free access for working men like himself, not just for apprentices.

He was turned down flat.

So he wrote a letter to the editor in The Pittsburgh Dispatch, protesting the policy. He made his case so well, the administrator backed down. The library would waive fees for common, everyday working men, in addition to apprentices.

Carnegie would mention his early experience with libraries often over his lifetime, and that is ultimately what inspired him to invest millions in building 2,500 libraries around the world, starting with his hometown in Scotland.

Libraries, Carnegie would write, were one of the seven best areas for philanthropy. They embodied a concept, laid out in his famous essay “Gospel of Wealth,” in which he said the rich should give to causes that help the poor improve their own lives and thus society as a whole.

After selling off his company, Carnegie set about giving away his fortune in earnest, just as he’d outlined in his essay. He funded church organs, colleges, schools, associations, foundations.

But the thing he is best known for are all of the libraries he helped to build. He built them in Europe, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia. But most of the 2,509 libraries popped up in America. Almost 1,800 libraries were built in the United States, of which 1,687 were public.

Lusk’s library was among the last public libraries Carnegie helped to build in Wyoming.

Lusk’s Carnegie, along with the Carnegie built in Thermopolis, were both completed in September 1919 — the same year that Carnegie died at his Shadow Brook Estate in Massachusetts.

A Permanent Home For Knowledge

Niobrara County did have a library before Carnegie’s program, but it was struggling to find a permanent home.

The Stillman Public Library, as it was then called, rented a room at the Masonic Temple for a time, before bouncing into a place called the Magoon Building.

At the time the local women’s reading group, the Civic Improvement Club, became interested in Carnegie’s library grants, Niobrara County’s library was being kept in the home of the county’s librarian, Louisa Katherine Fowler.

The library needed its own home, as did its librarian.

Carnegie promised the group $11,000 in May 1914, if it could meet the grant’s requirements. That included land for the library in the county seat, as well as adequate architectural plans, and the blessing of Niobrara County, which had to agree to provide library staff and operating funds.

To buy land, the Civic Improvement Club offered what it called subscriptions — a $5 donation being the highest — and the group was finally able to raise enough money to purchase land in 1917.

By then, however, the costs of building material had substantially increased, and Carnegie’s corporation wouldn’t approve a larger grant. That forced the group to revise its architectural plans, delaying construction to 1918.

The library was finally completed in September 1919, opening its doors with 1,346 volumes of imagination and knowledge for its patrons.

A Lasting Legacy

Lusk has the only Carnegie library in Wyoming with a corner entrance, but it has other architectural features common to Carnegies as well.

One of those common features are the stairs at the corner entrance. Carnegie wanted people to feel they were ascending to a new plane of knowledge whenever they entered a Carnegie Library.

Stairs weren’t required, but they were encouraged, as were other elements.

“He wanted an elegant entrance,” Graham said. “He usually had lights on either side of the door, like lamps of knowledge. He wanted sort of a distinguished facade, so that people thought they were entering an important place. A place of enlightenment.”

Stairs, however, aren’t accessible. So, over the years, Niobrara County approved a handicap accessible addition to expand its library, as well as to house more books.

The Carnegie part of the library still has the original stairs at the corner entrance, but the new addition has an elevator that can take patrons to either side of the library.

Graham said the addition is particularly impressive to her because of how it blends in with the original, repeating patterns from it in the new addition.

The Niobrara County Library also has a lot more things to check out than it once did — 59,000 items in all.

Those items aren’t just books. They are movies, they are puzzles, and they are hotspots for mobile internet access. They are anything that sharpens the mind or improves quality of life.

There’s even a walking book trail around the library, which invites children to improve their bodies while they improve their minds, by walking around the library to read the book.

“We provide things for all ages,” Niobrara County Library director Debbie Sturman told Cowboy state Daily. “We have special events all the time. Story hour, reading groups, movies. We even do concerts on occasion at the Congregational Church across the way.”

Libraries have had to rethink their relevance in the Internet age and think outside of the box, Sturman added.

“We’re always looking at different ways we can provide different services, as we see the needs ebbing and flowing,” she said. “I don’t have anything concrete in mind for the future, but we’ll continue to provide what we hope are programs that people want and materials that people want.”

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.