It's that bloke again.
You may remember the generous philanthropist Mr. Carnegie from an earlier post on Teddington Library (see Post 66). Now here he is again, barely a year or so later, with more than a finger in the pie (in a good and generous way) at Twickenham Library.
Twickenham Library
Carnegie’s Twickenham Library was built at around the same time as the library down the road in Teddington. The first public library in Twickenham had been established in 1882 following a public meeting and a poll of the district's ratepayers. The town's former private subscription library, in existence since 1844, was dissolved, and its stock donated to the new institution. By 1902 the library had outgrown the available space at the Town Hall, and £6,000 worth of funding was obtained from the Carnegie foundation to cover the cost of a new building. A site was obtained in Garfield Road, and in 1906-7 a new library was built by the contractor B.E. Nightingale, to designs by the architect Howard Goadby.
Andrew Carnegie
The new library housed 25,000 volumes, with room for a further 20,000 in the basement store, plus 3,000 more in the first-floor reference library. The first floor also accommodated a 110-seat lecture theatre.
To give some perspective, England's public library provision had lagged behind that of other European countries in the first half of the 19th Century, with only about 30 substantial free libraries in existence before 1850. A gradual expansion began following the 1850 Public Libraries and Museums Act and its various successors, which allowed towns above a certain size to levy a small rate for the development of library premises; books had to be obtained by other means. The London area, with its decentralised government and numerous existing subscription libraries, was particularly slow to take advantage of the new measures, although a cluster of western suburban districts including Twickenham, Richmond and Kingston adopted the Library Acts during the 1880s. Private endowments from philanthropists did much to make up the shortfall, often producing buildings rich in architectural display. The largest of these benefactors was Carnegie, whose reach went way beyond this little corner of S.W. London, using the enormous fortune he made in America to help establish around 2,800 libraries worldwide before his death. Not to mention Carnegie Hall.
Inside the new library
Twickenham library has benefitted from periodic internal renovations, most recently in 1985 and 2005, and is Grade II listed for the following principal reasons:
“Architecture: Main façade is a lively and accomplished neoclassical composition.
Sculpture: Good allegorical pediment group and portrait busts, expressing the institution's cultural significance in universal and local terms.
Interior: Well preserved, with good survival of decorative features”.
Splendid. Couldn’t have put it better myself.
Red arrow: Twickenham library
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