Carnegie Library of Atlanta

Atlanta, United States

Open to visitors

The interior is normally open, possibly ticketed.

Strollie cannot guarantee access — always check before you travel.

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Located at the intersection of Forsyth Street and Carnegie Way in Downtown Atlanta, the Carnegie Library was the city's first public library, erected with a $145,000 donation from industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Designed by the architectural firm Ackerman & Ross in the Beaux-Arts style, the two-story structure opened on March 4, 1902, and featured a distinctive white marble façade divided into vertical bays with flanking columns, windows, and ornamental carvings. The building was organized around a central corridor and staircase, with the basement housing a children's room, the first floor devoted to reading and deliveries, and the second floor containing administrative offices and a lecture room; four floors of book stacks were served by two mechanical lifts. Although expanded southward in 1935 and renovated in 1950 and 1966, the building succumbed to chronic overcrowding and was demolished in 1977 to make way for Marcel Breuer's modernist Atlanta Central Library on the same site, though portions of the original structure were preserved.