McMinnville Carnegie Library - McMinnville Oregon USA
Posted by: 
TheBeanTeam
N 45° 12.600 W 123° 11.961
10T E 484345 N 5006298
The McMinnville Carnegie Library is still in use today but has multiplied its original size many times over.
Waymark Code: WM8AXG
Location: Oregon, United States
Date Posted: 03/03/2010
Views: 8
The
McMinnville Public Library is now a much larger building. An addition has been built to the southwest connecting to the original
Andrew Carnegie funded structure of 1912. Thankfully, many of the features of the older building are still evident. The library has an area called the Carnegie Room that is used for meetings and book readings as a recognition of the Carnegie donation.
This is one of 24 Carnegie Libraries in Oregon. Additional grants were issued to a few Portland area libraries.
According to the book
Oregon Firsts:
"Oregon is the only state in the U.S. in which every community that was offered funds to build a library from Andrew Carnegie's foundation actually met the commitment with matching funds".
McMinnville was issued a grant of $10,000 on January 6, 1912. As a requirement for receiving a grant a community needed to provide "a suitable site for the library" and "at least ten percent" of the what it would take to support the library annually. The grant coupled with the additional funds allowed the construction of a 5,120 square foot library that was used through the 1970's. A new addition of 14,800 square feet was added to the structure and opened to the public in 1982. Source: OLA Quarterly, 1996 Spring issue Pages 6, 16-17 (PDF)