Andrew Carnegie
was born in Dunfermline,
Scotland, and emigrated to the United States with his very poor parents in
1848. Carnegie started as a telegrapher
and by the 1860s had investments in railroads, railroad sleeping cars, bridges
and oil derricks. He accumulated further
wealth as a bond salesman raising money for American enterprise in Europe. He built Pittsburgh's Carnegie Steel Company, which he sold in 1901 for $480 million (in 2014, $13.6 billion) creating
the U.S. Steel Corporation. Carnegie devoted the remainder of his life to
large-scale philanthropy with special emphasis on local libraries, world peace,
education and scientific research. With
the fortune he made from business, he built Carnegie
Hall and founded the Carnegie
Corporation of New York, Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie
Institution for Science, Carnegie
Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Carnegie
Hero Fund, Carnegie Mellon
University and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh among
others. His life has often been referred
to as a true "rags to riches" story.
A total of 2,509
Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929, St Annes Library was one
of the public libraries built others
included university library systems.
1,689 libraries were built in the United States, 660 in Britain and Ireland,
125 in Canada, and others in Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, the Caribbean, Mauritius, Malaysia and Fiji.
The foundation
stone of St. Anne's Library was laid in August 1904 and the building was
officially opened on 10 January 1906. The land was given by the St. Annes on
the Sea Land and Building Company and Andrew
Carnegie paid for the building.
(Information
mostly gathered from Wikipedia.)
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