English Avenue's Carnegie Library changes hands
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Credit: Courtesy of Westside Future Fund
A nonprofit tasked with revitalizing Westside communities and preventing displacement has purchased a little library that you likely never knew existed.
Driving the news: The Westside Future Fund closed on its purchase of the Carnegie Library on Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway in late October.
Flashback: In the late 1880s and early 1900s, steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie funded the construction of thousands of libraries across the world, including a stately Downtown branch and other smaller sites around the city.
Zoom in: The small Westside library opened in 1922. Fulton County and the city of Atlanta contributed $23,000 to build the classically elegant rectangular building, the WFF said.
- It drew students from the nearby English Avenue School and families in the neighborhood. 215 community kids attended its first story time event, according to Archive Atlanta.
- In 1930, the English Avenue neighborhood branch circulated more than 63,000 books, one of the highest totals in the city, according to the Atlanta Constitution.
- Two decades later, the city's library committee chairman recommended closing the English Avenue branch because "the white people in the [area] have nearly all moved," the newspaper reported in 1953.
In later years, the building operated as a taxi stand and a construction company's offices.
Zoom out: The fund has purchased historic buildings including the former apartment building where Maynard Jackson's family once lived on Sunset Avenue, not far from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s adult home.
What's next: The fund plans to convert the building into office space.