Wichita City Carnegie Library

One of fifty-eight libraries across Kansas funded by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, the Wichita Carnegie Library opened its doors in 1915 and served as the city's main library until 1967. The outside of the building was designed in the Beaux-Arts style by Anthony Allaire Crowell and the inside featured classical elements. To the growing city of Wichita, the library was a source of cultural pride, soon becoming a staple of education and literacy for its citizens. After the Central library replaced this structure as Wichita's downtown branch in the late 1960s, the historic building building housed government offices followed by a planetarium. The building is currently home to Fidelity Bank.

Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie sponsored nearly 1,700 libraries across the United States, with many others being built in countries like Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Public libraries are commonplace today, with many more cities having them than not. However, most of the growing midwest in the early twentieth century had no public library systems, so donating a single library was an invaluable contribution to local literacy and education. Towns had to meet some requirements to be eligible. They had to have at least a population of a thousand people as a prerequisite and needed to commit to maintaining, staffing, and funding the building and its operations after the library was built. The library also had to be free for all to use. Wichita and its rapidly growing population had no problem meeting these requirements, so they were awarded a $75,000 grant to construct the new library in 1912. Wichita's was one of nearly five dozen Carnegie Libraries across Kansas, and less than half of these remain today.

After being designed by Anthony Allaire Crowell, the Beaux-Arts-style building was completed in 1915. Located downtown directly south of City Hall, the new library was a source of great pride for Wichitans, quickly becoming regarded as a cultural and educational staple. The interior, designed by Parsons School-trained Louise Caldwell Murdock, boasted marble columns, Doric pilasters underneath the ceiling beams, and a classically detailed atrium. Stacks around the library housed growing numbers of books and other materials, while other areas had seating for patrons.

The Wichita Carnegie Library served the city for fifty years. The building was initially built to hold between 120,000 and 145,000 books and periodicals, a significant amount in the 1910s. By the mid-1960s, though, twice this amount had been crammed into the struggling library. Library staff did not struggle with funding or obtaining materials, but accommodating them all soon proved impossible, with stacks overtaking the building's seating and study areas. As a result, the Central Branch reopened in a Brutalist building in 1967. After this, the former Carnegie Library was a government building for some time. It served as a planetarium called the Wichita Omnisphere and Science Center for a time. When nearby Exploration Place opened in 2000, the Omnisphere closed, and the building was vacant for six years before becoming the headquarters for Fidelity Bank in 2006. Restoration projects were undertaken in 2008 for the building's new purpose and in 2015 in honor of the former library's hundredth birthday.

Hagedorn, Martha Gray. Wichita City (Carnegie) Library Building - National Register of Historic Places Inventory - Nomination Form, Kansas Historical Society. April 15th, 1987. Accessed February 4th, 2023. https://www.kshs.org/resource/national_register/nominationsNRDB/Sedgwick_WichitaCarnegieLibraryBuildingNR.pdf.

Wichita's Carnegie Library celebrates 100 years, The Topeka-Capital Journal. April 27th, 2015. Accessed February 4th, 2023. https://www.cjonline.com/story/news/politics/state/2015/04/27/wichitas-carnegie-library-celebrates-100-years/16484980007/.

THE WICHITA CARNEGIE LIBRARY BUILDING HISTORIC RENOVATION, WDM Architects. Accessed February 4th, 2023. https://wdmarchitects.com/case-study/carnegie-fidelity/.