A Portland Community Votes to Invest $13 Million in Its Carnegie Library

When Andrew Carnegie funded the construction of nearly 1,700 Carnegie Libraries across the United States, beginning in 1886, he insisted on the condition that the libraries be maintained by their communities. Many of them have kept that commitment for more than a century. In our new series, Carnegie Library Road Trip, we visit some of these remarkable public institutions.

North Portland Library is a cherished place for Karis Stoudamire-Phillips, who was born and raised in the historically Black neighborhood. In the early 1980s, at about age four, she got her first library card there. And even before that, she recalls, “my mother was taking me to that library.”

In the early 1990s, in the third-floor community room, she practiced walking with books on her head, rehearsing with her high school friends for a debutante ball, part of the Les Femmes program for African American youth. Around the same time, she put her name on the waiting list for a book of poetry by the Black American poet and social activist Langston Hughes.

Karis Stoudamire-Phillips speaks at the groundbreaking ceremony for the renovation of North Portland Library in May 2023. (Credit: Multnomah County)

And since she reached voting age, Stoudamire-Phillips, an executive at Moda Health of Oregon, has always cast her ballot at the library — Multnomah County libraries have been official ballot drop sites for some thirty years, and are among more than 750 libraries nationwide that served that purpose in the 2020 election, according to data by the American Library Association, a Carnegie grantee. In 2020, it was at the library that Stoudamire-Phillips voted “Yes” for a renovation and expansion project that transformed the space. Overall, the ballot measure authorized a total of $387 million for the building of a flagship library in East Multnomah County and the renovation and expansion of eight libraries, three of them Carnegie sites — with a $13 million budget specifically for North Portland Library. In the neighborhood surrounding the branch, more than 80 percent of residents voted for the measure.

Closing for renovation in the spring of 2023, North Portland Library reopened its doors in February 2025. More than a thousand members of the community gathered for a two-day weekend celebration.

The original 1913 floor plan of North Portland Library. (Credit: Multnomah County Library)

A floor plan of the renovated North Portland Library. (Credit: Multnomah County Library)

Located in Portland, Oregon, the North Portland Library sits at the tree-lined corner of North Killingsworth Street and North Commercial Avenue. Next door is Jefferson High School, with 600 students enrolled in grades nine through 12. The library and the high school essentially share a full block. According to census data, more than 20 percent of the area’s residents live in poverty, compared to 12.8 percent in the city of Portland.

Annie Lewis, director of libraries for Multnomah County, says community engagement informed the design — resulting in the new Black Cultural Center and the modernization of the building. North Portland Library is “a place for people to gather for civic engagement,” Lewis says. “We’re really embracing that as we move into the future by creating more open space and more ways for people to connect.” An April 2025 survey found that two-thirds of Portland-area voters had browsed their local library at least once in the past year.

An undated archival photo shows the reading room of North Portland Library. (Credit: Multnomah County Library)

The Oregon library system as a whole benefited from Carnegie’s philanthropy. Multnomah County Library, the first public library in Oregon, used Carnegie grants to fund seven branch libraries, beginning in 1911. Three of those libraries are still in use today, including North Portland, St. Johns Library, and Albina Library, which recently completed its own renovation and expansion.

Today, North Portland Library holds English lessons, citizenship classes, and tech workshops, among a wide range of civics resources. At the heart of the new space is the Black Cultural Center.

A voter-approved $13 million renovation added 1,500 square feet of space to North Portland Library. (Credit: Multnomah County Library/Bob Kerns Photography)

“This library is a crucial part of the rejuvenation and revitalization of the Black community, of bringing people back to this neighborhood,” says Stoudamire-Phillips. She now brings her two boys, 10 and 15. “It’s a place where we flourish; where we go, and we see ourselves. It instills pride in who we are, and joy.”

Melanie Stevens feels the same. She was among a number of local artists and designers commissioned to contribute works to the new space. Attending the reopening celebration, she spotted kids playing around a window seat. The cozy nook, facing onto North Commercial Avenue, was framed by Stevens’ custom-crafted wooden-relief sculptural portraits of four Black American literary icons: W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Sun Ra, and Octavia Butler. Stevens was moved by the thought of people living and studying in this space for years to come, she says, “under the tutelage, under the watch, of these great figures.”

Siobhan Roberts is a regular contributor to The New York Times. Her latest book is Genius at Play: The Curious Mind of John Horton Conway (Princeton University Press).

By The Numbers

67% of Portland voters have browsed their local library at least once in the past year. A 2023 survey by the EveryLibrary Institute found that 96% of parents feel their children are safe at the library. The budget for a 2023 renovation of North Portland Library was $13 million, approved by voters as part of a ballot measure to renovate and expand the Multnomah County Library system. An original Carnegie grant of $165,000 made in 1901 to Portland, Oregon, funded the construction of 7 library buildings. 3 of those remain in use today, including North Portland Library. The total space of the North Portland Library is now 10,200 square feet, including the 1,500 square feet added in its 2023 renovation.

Andrew Carnegie funded the construction of nearly 1,700 public libraries in the United States, on the condition that communities would maintain them as public institutions. Have a story about your Carnegie Library? Share it with us here.