Keeping Carnegies

MONTICELLO - More than a century after Monticello received $10,000 from steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie to help build its library, a local entrepreneur is looking to take the building in a new direction - for half the price.

Cody Zumbach, 22, the owner of CZ Top Computers, bought the building - built in 1903 and vacant since the new Monticello library was built two years ago - for $5,000. He now wants to spend at least $40,000 more to move his business into the building within the year, in hopes of turning the bottom floor into a hangout where area teens can play games over a computer network.

“I'm trying to keep it open to the public,” Zumbach said. “I didn't want it to become an office space where if they're not working there, they're not welcome.”

It is an increasingly common fate for these beautifully built Carnegie libraries, scattered all over Iowa. As the venerable buildings enter their second century of life, many communities, larger than they were 100 years ago, are deciding if they can afford to keep their aging Carnegies.

“The buildings are very old, and they can't handle the needs of a public library anymore,” said Anne Wetteland, 55, spokeswoman for the State Library of Iowa. “Communities think about renovating, but the cost is often too prohibitive.”

Shana Stuart, director of the Carnegie Libraries in Iowa Project at the University of Iowa, said more than 50 of the 101 original Carnegie Public Libraries in Iowa still function as libraries. Most of them built in the first two decades of the 20th century, a little more than 80 of the buildings are still standing.

“The fact that so many of them are around 100 years later, some of them still in use, is a testament to the craftsmanship that was put into these buildings,” Stuart said.

Stuart said that Carnegie libraries have a rich history in Iowa, given that the state received more grants to build libraries than all but three other states - Indiana, Illinois and California.

She attributed that proliferation to the number of Iowans who wrote the Carnegie Foundation requesting funding, many of them arguing in their letters that libraries were necessary to provide the town's young men an alternative to the local saloon.

The architecture styles for the libraries varied widely, from Prairie to Neo-Classical, serving almost as a fingerprint for the community. Stuart said most Iowa towns have tried to hold on to their Carnegie libraries, even if they are used for other purposes, such as museums or businesses.

Iowa City's Carnegie library, for example, is now an apartment building. In Marion, the modernized building serves as the offices for the First United Methodist Church, with remnants of the building's historical style.

In Fairfield in south-central Iowa, the first Carnegie library west of the Mississippi, built in 1892, is now home to the Jefferson County Service Center for Indian Hills Community College.

The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art also is a former Carnegie.

Dedicated in 1905, the space was vacated when the city's library moved to First Street SE in 1985.

Carlis Faurot, 54, the museum's facilities manager, said he is pleased to have the museum in such a historic venue.

“The feeling I get walking in here every day is that this is a great place to work,” Faurot said. “There's a sense of history, a sense that we're so glad that the city decided not to tear it down,”

Faurot said it was no accident the museum ended up in the library, as the Cedar Rapids Art Association took up residence in the upstairs of the building in 1906. The building was updated with new sections in 1989 and 2004, but besides these updates, it remains much the same as it was 100 years ago.

Other communities have updated their libraries. In Marengo, a $2.14 million renovation project - much of it to make the library handicap-accessible - doubled the library's space in 2007.

Longtime librarian Peggy Walton, 60, said the refurbished library “feels like home.”

While working on the project, the Marengo library board visited renovated Carnegies in Manchester, Oskaloosa, Traer and West Liberty looking for inspiration.

Beth Brown, 89, of Cedar Rapids, the president of the Marengo Library board at the time, said she was thrilled the community decided to keep the old building.

“They couldn't build another one like it,” she said. “Architects change over time, just like the heels of women's shoes.”

- By Stephen Schmidt, The Gazette