<P> Carnegie was attached to free libraries since his days as a young messenger - boy in Pittsburgh, when each Saturday he borrowed a new book from one . Carnegie systematically funded 2,507 libraries throughout the English - speaking world . James Bertram, Carnegie's chief aide from 1894 to 1914 administered the library program, issued guidelines and instituted an architectural review process . </P> <P> Between 1886 and 1917, Carnegie reformed both library philanthropy and library design, encouraging a closer correspondence between the two . The Carnegie buildings typically followed a standardized style called "Carnegie Classic": a rectangular, T - shaped or L - shaped structure of stone or brick, with rusticated stone foundations and low - pitched, hipped roofs, with space allocated by function and efficiency . </P> <P> His libraries served not only as free circulating collections of books, magazines and newspapers, but also provided classrooms for growing school districts, Red Cross stations, and public meeting spaces, not to mention permanent jobs for the graduates of newly formed library schools . Academic libraries were built for 108 colleges . Usually there was no charge to read or borrow; in New Zealand, however, local taxes were too low to support libraries and most charged subscription fees to their users . The arrangements were always the same: Carnegie would provide the funds for the building but only after the municipal government had provided a site for the building and had passed an ordinance for the purchase of books and future maintenance of the library through taxation . This policy was in accord with Carnegie's philosophy that the dispensation of wealth for the benefit of society must never be in the form of free charity but rather must be as a buttress to the community's responsibility for its own welfare . </P> <P> In 1901, Carnegie offered to donate $100,000 to the city of Richmond, Virginia, for a public library . The city council had to furnish a site for the building and guarantee that $10,000 in municipal funds would be budgeted for the library each year . Despite the support from the majority of Richmond's civic leaders, the city council rejected Carnegie's offer . A combination of aversion to new taxes, fear of modernization, and fear that Carnegie might require the city to admit black patrons to his library account for the local government's refusal . A Richmond Public Library did open in 1924 with alternative sources of funding . In a municipal election in 1904 union leaders in Wheeling, West Virginia, blocked the acceptance of a Carnegie library . The Detroit Library subsisted on library fines and inadequate city funds; Carnegie offered $750,000 in 1901 but was turned down because it was "tainted money"; after nine more years of underfunding Detroit took the money . </P>

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