Red Oak Public Library

Iowa, 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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The Red Oak Public Library in Red Oak, Iowa, is a Tudor Revival structure designed by the Chicago firm Patton & Miller and dedicated on October 8, 1909. Funded by a $12,500 Andrew Carnegie grant awarded in 1906, the two-story brick-and-half-timbered building features a side-gable plan with distinctive concave buttresses that rise from the base and emerge above the eaves as parapets. Its main entrance unusually sits at grade level. Two-story additions were constructed in 1924 for book stacks and on the south side for reading rooms, with a further northward expansion dedicated in 2010; all additions respect the original design's character. Listed individually on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, the library was later included as a contributing property in the Red Oak Downtown Historic District in 2016.