Carnegie in El Paso

Carnegie's Gift to El Paso

Preserving memories of the building supported by a Carnegie grant of $37,500.

The library opened in 1904 and was demolished in 1968. The architects were Mauran, Russel and Garden of St. Louis.

While El Paso may no longer have the Carnegie Library, Carnegie's gift continues to live on in historical collections. The images above and others can be found on our partner page at Portal to Texas History. The first image is a metal plaque which hung outside the El Paso Carnegie Library and now is a part of the Border Heritage Center collection. 

The Carnegie Library was not the beginning of libraries in El Paso, the first effort in establishing a library was by Mary Irene Stanton, a schoolteacher, who founded the library and donated her book collection in 1894. The initial library site was a rented room in Sheldon Block. In 1897, L M Sheldon offered the library a larger room free of rent.

Over time, the collection grew as did the Library Association which oversaw the library. It was when Sheldon Block was remodeled into the Sheldon Hotel, pictured above, that the library found a new home. The collections moved to El Paso City Hall in 1895. In 1900, the idea to have a standalone building for the library became popular with the public who then began to petition for it. It was in 1902 when Carnegie granted funds for a library that El Paso was finally able to build the first public library building.

For more local history, visit the Border Heritage Center.