Wichita City Carnegie Library Building

Wichita, United States

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The interior is normally open, possibly ticketed.

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Located at 220 South Main Street in Wichita, Kansas, the Wichita City Carnegie Library Building is a two-story limestone structure completed in 1915 in the Beaux-Arts style. Built from ashlar-cut limestone blocks on a raised limestone foundation, the rectangular building measures approximately 128 feet north to south and 83 feet east to west, with its façade oriented west toward the central business district. A distinctive square tower rising from the building's central bay is topped with a rounded, truncated hipped roof covered in pantiles and crowned by a monitor roof, punctuated by tripartite windows of translucent glass. The façade features a projecting parapetted entry pavilion and ornamental limestone or terracotta entablature with egg-and-dart detailing, bracketed frieze, and incised vegetal and shell motifs. The interior was designed by interior designer Louise Caldwell Murdock. After Wichita's Central Library opened in 1966, the Carnegie building served successively as city offices and municipal court before becoming home to the Wichita Omnisphere and Science Center in 1976. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987, it stands directly south of the old City Hall.

Movement

Beaux-Arts

Built: 1914
Type: Carnegie library
Materials: limestone
Heritage: listed on the Register of Historic Kansas Places, National Register of Historic Places listed place
Place: Wichita, United States

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Location

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