on a monument he erected in front of the Carnegie Library in Allegheny, New York. The inscription reads:
To Colonel James Anderson, Founder of Free Libraries in Western Pennsylvania. He opened his Library to working boys and upon Saturday afternoons acted as librarian, thus dedicating not only his books but himself to the noble work. This monument is erected in grateful remembrance by Andrew Carnegie, one of the “working boys” to whom were thus opened the precious treasures of knowledge and imagination through which youth may ascend.3
In his autobiography, Carnegie wrote that “This is but a slight tribute and gives only a faint idea of the depth of gratitude which I feel for what he [Anderson] did for me and my companions. It was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good to boys and girls who have within them the ability and ambition to develop it, as the founding of a public library in a community which is willing to support it as a municipal institution.”4
In Brantford, the first library was organized by Dr. Charles Duncombe in 1835, when he set up the Brantford Mechanics’ Institute. Duncombe, born in Connecticut in 1792, moved to Upper Canada in 1819. Although he lived in Burford Township in Brant County, he also owned property in Brantford. An ardent Reformer, Duncombe became a member of the provincial legislature in 1830, and worked actively in support of progressive ideas in education, prisons, health, and other areas. In 1824, he established Ontario’s first medical school in St. Thomas. In Brantford, the Mechanics’ Institute he founded was located in a small basement downtown and circulated one hundred donated books put on loan to the public. Duncombe sowed the seeds of its and his own undoing in 1837 when he supported the Mackenzie rebellion, gathering a force of five to six hundred men, who quickly abandoned him when they met real troops, failing to achieve anything of significance. In the aftermath, he fled back to the United States.
When Duncombe left, the Mechanics’ Institute closed but it was revived in 1840, and merged with the Zion Church Literary Society in 1866. The church’s minister, William Cochrane, one of the founders of Brantford’s Young Ladies’ College, served as president for twelve years. After a fire destroyed the Institute and most of its books in 1870, it was relocated above an early YMCA building on Colborne. The Institute operated in this location until 1884, when it was dissolved by a city council motion that replaced it with the Brantford Free Library. The motion passed by a decisive majority, though some worried that the library would turn Brantford’s wives into “novel readers.”5
It was Judge Alexander Hardy who brought a Carnegie library to Brantford. A brother of Ontario Premier Arthur Sturgis Hardy, Alexander was a prominent local figure who was dedicated to public education, and to the library in particular. In March of 1902, at a meeting of city council, Alderman J. Inglis forwarded a motion to petition Andrew Carnegie for a library, a city hall, or both. The motion was defeated, but Judge Hardy had already written Carnegie on behalf of the Library Board. In April, Hardy heard back from Carnegie’s secretary, James Bertram, who offered funding of thirty thousand dollars. As soon as the offer was received, any doubts about the building of a library appear to have evaporated, and the project proceeded. On two later occasions, Hardy secured further funding — a visit to New York secured an extra five thousand dollars for the original construction, and a third request, in 1913, secured another thirteen thousand to enlarge the basement.
As planning for the library proceeded, a debate arose over the appropriate location. Newspapers, politicians, and the public participated in a heated discussion over two different sites: their relative costs, which was most suitable for women and children, and so on and so forth. After a great deal of debate and some manoeuvring by vocal members of the public, the newspapers, the city council, and the Library Board, the “park site” on George Street, on the eastern side of Victoria Square, was chosen.
Reverend G.C. Mackenzie, the rector of Grace Anglican and chair of the Library Board, laid the cornerstone for the new library on December 16, 1902. The Brantford Expositor reported that Mayor D.B. Wood spoke at the ceremony, describing “the splendid building that is now being erected and of what it meant to the beauty and progress of the city. The building would be large, spacious, beautiful, ornamental and useful. It would be a building that would rank among the best in Canada for architectural beauty.… Every detail of the building had been gone into … and when the building was completed it would be one of which every Brantfordite would be proud.”6
Ironically, and somewhat unfairly, the official cornerstone recorded the names of the city councillors who voted down Inglis’s motion to approach Carnegie, but not the name of Judge Hardy, who secured the funding. The oversight was not remedied until after his death, when a memorial stone recognizing his role was included in the north side of new library steps.
The finished library, built by Stewart, Stewart &Taylor Architects and Shultz Bros. Construction,7 did not disappoint. The day after it opened, The Expositor reported that “vast sums” had been expended, and that their “careful investigation” had revealed that the “outlay is much greater than was first anticipated.”8 The story hints at public scandal, but not in a way that diminished the paper’s enthusiasm for the finished building: “The new Carnegie library in this city was informally opened, and last evening a very large number of prominent people took advantage of the opportunity to inspect the building.… It presented a unique appearance, and those who saw it from a distance or gave it a critical inspection while going through were more than delighted. The building is complete in every particular.”9
The Expositor’s “Library Notes” of the same day reported that “The free library opened yesterday and was crowded as a result, all day long. Hundreds visited the building and expressed themselves as delighted with the interior furnishings. The library is certainly fitted up in magnificent shape and everything has been done with a view to the comfort of the patrons.” The only negative note sounded complained of some “considerable trouble” with “dogs which were brought in.” To ensure no similar problems in the future, a new library regulation prohibiting dogs in the building was immediately established.
Right from the start, the Brantford library was recognized as one of Canada’s finest examples of the Beaux Arts style that it embodies. Situated on the edge of one of the country’s finest Victorian squares, its architectural details included a mansard roof, a dome, and a grand entrance. The entrance was set in a large portico at the top of a long, imposing stairway. At the top of the stairs, four Ionic columns supported a triangular pediment in front of the building’s dome. The interior featured archways, pillars, a mosaic, and a rotunda with a stained glass skylight with Islamic tracery situated underneath the dome. Above the main entrance, the builders inscribed a boast from Virgil, who wrote, “I have erected a monument more lasting than bronze.” The names Shakespeare, Dickens, Milton, Tennyson, Burns, and other English-speaking writers were embossed in pediments above the first floor windows.
Lavish details like those in the Brantford library were common in Carnegie’s early buildings. It is not clear what his secretary, James Bertram, thought of the details of the Brantford library, but he grew impatient with cities which, in his opinion, spent Carnegie’s money on unnecessary architectural embellishments. In 1911, he issued a pamphlet entitled Notes on the Erection of Library Buildings, which included written advice and standard designs, and warned against “aiming at such exterior effects as may make impossible an effective and economical layout of the interior.” The pamphlet was sent to municipal authorities when they were notified that they had received a Carnegie grant. Looking at the library in Brantford, one wonders if Bertram was too concerned about architectural extravagances, for the fine details of the Brantford building very successfully confirmed its significance.
Details of the Brantford Carnegie Library. The quote from Horace above the front entrance translates as “I
