Reading for 26 Feb: Free to All

Abigail Van Slyck, in her book Free to All: Carnegie Libraries and American Culture, takes an innovative approach to study Carnegie libraries through their architecture and design. She sheds light on historic American culture between 1886 and 1917 by making architecture as the window to a cultural analysis of American towns and cities. A seemingly simple institution, Van Slyck notes how “we expect neither drama nor excitement [from the Carnegie library],” for they seem “neither threatening nor eccentric” (xix). However, as she demonstrates throughout the course of her book, Carneglie libraries are not well understood, and the myths surrounding them distort the truth they represent. Through the study of architecture, Van Slyck affirms, we can gain a more “balanced interpretation” of the Carnegie library and gives us multiple angles from which we may view the larger cultural landscape. Overall, Van Slyck effectively guides readers through the architectural significane of Carnegie libraries and their long-term – yet dynamic and ever-evolving – effect on the cities they called home, and on American culture at large.

Van Slyck discusses Carnegie’s philanthropy and pokes holes in the misguided intentions library was told over and over again becoming solidified into a mythical version that manipulated the facts to serve a business and rhetorical purpose (9). The holes in Carnegie’s story foreshadow the obscured truth that Van Slyck reveals behind his library buildings themselves. This paternalistic philanthropy often “required both benefactor and recipient to address each other with exaggerated graciousness” and imposed eternal debt and gratitude on the recipients that had not asked to incur such a debt (2). After all, with such a generous donation, no municipality would ever be able to actually repay it. James Bertram later tried to remedy this affliction by making the “donor’s presence… substantially less palpable” and removing fireplaces from his plans in order to reduce the chance of creating a “hearth as shrine to benefactor” (41). Moreover, Carnegie’s philanthropic donations were not happily accepted everywhere – so began the controversy of “tainted money.” The claim went that by accepting illegally or unethically obtained money, the acceptor would condone the wrongdoings done in making the tainted money (19). Other unwelcoming cities cited moral reasons for declining money along the same lines.

The cultural stories behind Carnegie libraries, though, take place both within and beyond the buildings’ walls. Van Slyck moves to use the libraries as a demonstration of the actors who made them work: businesses, club women, library staff, and other outside players. She provides a strong analysis of the negotiations among the librarians, architects, furniture dealers, local cultural associations, and other business groups. The librarian-architect debate clashed over the design of the library. Librarian service needs often did not match up with architects’ design desires. As librarians emerged as a force in the library’s design after the ALA’s establishment, librarians spoke out against the traditional library of architects, resulting in a “long and intesnse battle between architects and librarians over which professional group should prevail in matters of library planning” (5). The Library Bureau itself expressed eagerness to “confer with architects concerning details of heating, lighting, ventilation, and fixtures as applied to special needs of the libraries” and even created the Furniture Department to provide such needs (48). Unfortunately, architects often ignored their offer, particularly in the beginning of the era. The outside design of libraries, Van Slyck demonstrates, opens up a new insight into Carnegie libraries and the secrets they hold about American culture. Instead of making them more welcoming to working-class users and able to be supported by their tax dollars, a two-tier system was adopted where a grand central library in an ideal setting was built in addition to modest branch libraries in the neighborhoods where the working-class resided (79). Such a conflict over architecture effectively demonstrates the class tension centered around library use. Previous articles from class discuss elitism in the library and the social control they attempted to command. Van Slyck’s portrayal of the architecture debate only heightens this point.

In chapter five, Van Slyck discusses the implications of feminization on the library profession. Women in the library profession were a way to provide cheap labor. Male library leaders often marginalized the female librarian by placing her work station in the center of the library, surrounded by “a material world intended to hem in her ambition and her achievement” (200). However, female actors within the Carnegie library transcended these barriers and lobbied for change, making the paternalistic design obsolete. Librarians were able to make “more drastic changes in the form of their libraries,” and female librarians took this to their advantage (179). Architecture was not always able to dominate the female librarian, and the Carnegie library demonstrates this change over time. In discussing children, Van Slyck’s admittedly limited evidence still provides interesting insight into the child of the Carnegie library (203). Although the experience of a few children do not establish a definite reality of library practice, that is not to say their stories are unique nor that other children did not have similar experiences. Moreover, it is no question that the public library historically held a degree of social control over its patrons – forcing them to conform their behavior to expected ideals, and the Carnegie library design facilitated librarians control over the child patron.

The walls of an institution hold many secrets, and the Carnegie library is not exception. However, through a little bit of careful investigation, these secrets are revealed and act has posters and pathways to American culture at the turn of the century. Abigail Van Slyck effectively guides readers along these pathways, demonstrating the high degree of information across many disciplines one can learn from the study of architecture. Not only does she illustrate that “Carnegie libraries were self-consciously designed to encourage a process of social and cultural transformation,” but she reveals that transformation both within and beyond the Carnegie library (216).