For a grant of US$50,000 this Carnegie Public Library was built in 1903 at what was the commercial centre of the City of Vancouver. With the City Hall next door on Westminster Road, today Main Street, and the Farmer's Market in the lane behind.
Over the 20th century the neighbourhood changed. By the mid-1930s the city hall shifted to the uptown neighbourhood of Fairview. The department stores worked their west on Hastings Street and then up Granville Street to be centre around the Hudson's Bay Company store. And in 1957 the building no longer functioned as the library as the main branch shifted to Burrard and Robson streets. The Carnegie Public Library then housed the city's museum until 1967 when it opened in Kitsilano Point.
Meanwhile the Downtown Eastside increasing became a poorer neighbourhood and in recent decades it postal code forward sortation code -- V6A -- has become to recognized as the nation's poorest by Canada Census. Yet it is also the neighbourhood where people move the least with many people residing in the same rooming hotel for twenty years or more.
Prostitution, drug addicts, and other seedier lifestyles became very dominant at Hastings and Main and on the steps of the Carnegie Public Library. In 1980 the building became a focal point as it was turned into the Carnegie Community Centre and a branch of the Vancouver Public Library opened there. Interesting this branch is open everyday of the year to serve the needs of the residents. The only one in the city. Today this complex is referred to as The Downtown Eastside’s Living Room.