Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh

Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh
	Interior view of the main branch in the Oakland neighborhood
	40°26′34″N 79°57′03″W / 40.442728°N 79.950787°W
Location	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Established	February 6, 1890
Collection
Size	5,230,200
Access and use
Circulation	3,529,379
Population served	2.6 million
Members	294,733
Other information
Budget	$26,879,454
Website	www.CarnegieLibrary.org
	U.S. National Register of Historic Places
	Pittsburgh Landmark – PHLF
	Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Main Branch in the city's Oakland neighborhood
Location	4400 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Area	9.5 acres (3.8 ha)
NRHP reference No.	79002158
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	March 30, 1979
Designated PHLF	1970

The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is the public library system in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Its main branch is located in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, and it has 19 branch locations throughout the city. Like hundreds of other Carnegie libraries, the construction of the main library, which opened in 1895, and several neighborhood branches, was funded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie. The Pittsburgh area houses the first branches in the United States.

The Pittsburgh Photographic Library is a photography repository held by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh of over 50,000 prints and negatives relating to history of Pittsburgh.

History

The City of Pittsburgh was originally home to eight Carnegie libraries constructed at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1881, Andrew Carnegie offered a US$250,000 grant to the city for the construction of a public library on the condition that the city provided the land and annual funding for the maintenance of the property.^[4] The city declined Carnegie's initial offer out of concern that a publicly funded library was not a state-sanctioned use of public tax funds. With the passing of several years and the state legislature's endorsement of the project, however, the city reconsidered the offer and reached out to Carnegie in the interest of accepting his grant.^[4]

In 1890, the City of Pittsburgh accepted an expanded grant of $1 million for the building of the main library in Oakland and five branches in the neighborhoods of Lawrenceville, West End, Wylie Avenue (Hill District), Mount Washington, and Hazelwood.^[5] While the initial plan only called for those five branches, the city later received another three Carnegie libraries in the East Liberty, South Side, and Homewood neighborhoods. Construction on the main library was finished in 1895 while the branch libraries were constructed over the following fifteen years, ending with the completion of the Homewood branch in 1910.^[5]

Six of the original Carnegie library branch locations continue to serve as public libraries in their respective neighborhoods: Lawrenceville, West End, Mount Washington, Hazelwood, South Side, and Homewood. The East Liberty branch was demolished in the 1960s as part of a redevelopment plan, and the Wylie Avenue branch was moved to a new location in 1982.^[4]

In January 2022, the 201 members of the United Library Workers (ULW), the union of library staff, which organized with United Steelworkers in 2019, ratified their first contract with the library's management.^[6] Environmental service workers and drivers had already been unionized with the Teamsters and SEIU.^[7]

Branches/Locations

Allegheny
Allegheny County Law Library
Beechview
Brookline
Carrick
Downtown and Business
East Liberty
Hazelwood
Hill District
Homewood
Knoxville
Lawrenceville
Library of Accessible Media for Pennsylvanians (formerly Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped) (Bloomfield)
Main (Oakland)
Mt. Washington
Sheraden
South Side
Squirrel Hill
West End
Woods Run

Partnership with suburban branches

For decades, CLP has partnered with suburban area branches, and, in 2014, talks were started seeking innovative ways to combine some services.^[8]

Theft case

In 2018, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported that nearly 320 rare books, maps, engravings, and other items had been stolen from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh's main branch in Oakland, which houses the system's rare book collection.^[9] The items, including a 1787 document signed by Thomas Jefferson, were valued at more than $8 million. In July 2018, a former library archivist and a Pittsburgh-area bookseller were charged with the thefts, which took place over a period of two decades.^[10]

It was one of the largest rare-book theft cases in history.^[10] According to the criminal complaints detailing alleged scheme, the archivist said that he "often removed items from the Oliver Room at the library's main branch in Oakland by carrying individual plates [and] maps in manila folders, or for books or larger items, by brazenly rolling them up and walking out." The archivist is alleged to have turned the rare items over to the bookseller, who would then sell them through his store.^[10]