Andrew Carnegie’s Free Public Library Philanthropy
Born in Scotland, Andrew Carnegie made libraries and books available to millions of people and helped accelerate the free public library movement in America. A new comic highlights Carnegie’s library philanthropy, resulting in nearly 1,700 libraries in the United States
By Jongsma + O’Neill & Chuan Ming Ong
Nov 13, 2025
Andrew Carnegie’s formal schooling ended when he immigrated at age 12 to Allegheny, Pennsylvania, from Scotland with his family. When he became one of the world’s richest men later in life, Carnegie’s first major philanthropy was libraries, having benefited personally from borrowing books as a working boy. Carnegie often recalled the life-changing experience of having access as a teenager to the private library of Colonel James Anderson, a retired businessman, who offered to lend books to workers every Saturday.
“He only had about 400 volumes in his library, but they were valuable books, and I shall never forget the enjoyment and the instruction I gained from them when I was too poor to buy books myself,” Carnegie told The New York Times in 1899. “Is it any wonder that I decided then and there that if ever I had any surplus wealth I would use it in lending books to others?”
The best gift that could be given to a community was a free library, according to Carnegie in his influential book The Gospel of Wealth (1889). Carnegie’s great interest was not in library buildings but in the opportunities that libraries offered to everyone for knowledge and understanding. He saw them as “ladders provided upon which the aspiring may climb.”
Starting in 1881 with a gift of a library to his birthplace of Dunfermline, Scotland, Carnegie — and later his philanthropic foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York — gave some $56 million to build 2,509 public libraries. Of these Carnegie Libraries, 1,681 were built in the United States.
Public library philanthropy in the United States began in 1886 with Andrew Carnegie’s $250,000 gift to build a free public library in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, on the condition that it would be maintained by the city. Often referred to as the “Patron Saint of Libraries” in his lifetime, Carnegie made hundreds of libraries and books available to millions of people and helped accelerate the public library movement in America.
Carnegie’s vision continues to guide the efforts of Carnegie Corporation of New York, one of the largest philanthropic funders of libraries, from the early construction of buildings to helping establish the endowment of the American Library Association, funding the nation’s first graduate library school, digitizing collections around the world, supporting English language and civic programs, and providing grants to all existing Carnegie Libraries to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.
Download Andrew Carnegie’s full comic here.
* Immigrants make up one in five entrepreneurs in the United States and generate $116.2 billion in business income. (Source: Map the Impact, American Immigration Council, 2024)
Eline Jongsma and Kel O’Neill lead Jongsma + O’Neill, a nonfiction storytelling studio. They are Sundance fellows, Emmy nominees, and the creators of the immersive exhibition Loot. 10 Stories, which won the 2024 XR-History Award.
Chuan Ming Ong is a Dutch illustrator whose illustrations have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, and Nikkei Asia.
