Gloversville Library NY

The images in this collection cover the building of the Gloversville, New York Carnegie Library that was erected with funds provided by Andrew Carnegie. Mr. Carnegie's grant was given largely due to the personal friendship between Mr. Carnegie’s secretary, Mr. Bertram and Professor Adolph Peck, the library's first professional librarian. As will all of these grants it was required that the City of Gloversville continue to support the library financially. The cornerstone was laid on August 27, 1904. Albert Randolph Ross, an architect with the New York firm of McKim, Mead and White, designed this masterpiece of Beaux Arts style, which, since 1976, has been listed in the National Register of Historic Places. When the library was first built, it literally gleamed, being constructed of a soft creamy colored limestone base and top and a slightly darker tan brick. It was Gloversville’s new library and it represented a beacon of self-education and opportunity to the population of Gloversville, many who had recently arrived here from the “old country” to work in the leather industry that dominated the city’s economy.