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The 108-year-old Carnegie Library in the northern Hamilton County town of Atlanta will have a second life next year when the building reopens as the community’s Town Hall.
The Neoclassical-style building at 100 S. Walnut St. was the Hamilton North Public Library’s North Branch before it closed last year due to decreasing use and budget constraints. Hamilton North Public Library now operates one branch in Cicero.
The building will require about $150,000 in renovations to retrofit it as the new Atlanta Town Hall, but town employees should begin moving into the building early next year.
“When the library closed, we knew we had to jump on it quickly because there were other people that were interested in the building,” Atlanta Clerk-Treasurer Jennifer Farley said.
Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie funded the construction of 1,689 libraries in the United States between 1901 and 1922. Atlanta’s 4,100-square-foot Carnegie Library, which opened in 1916, was one of 164 public libraries in Indiana built with funding from the Carnegie Corp. of New York.
Four years after the library opened in 1920, Atlanta had a population of 678 residents, which was more than Carmel (598), Fishers (142) and Westfield (574), according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The town counted 712 residents in the 2020 Census.
Atlanta’s building was one of five Carnegie Libraries built in Hamilton County. Carmel’s former library building is now Woody’s Library Restaurant, while Noblesville’s is part of City Hall. Sheridan’s is an office for United Animal Health Inc. and Westfield’s is home to Cave & Co. Printing Inc.
Mark Dollase, vice president of preservation services for Indianapolis-based Indiana Landmarks, noted that Indiana received more library grants through Carnegie’s program than any other state.
“[Libraries are] a touchstone of the importance of education in the community and for many people through their lifetimes,” Dollase said. “I think Andrew Carnegie understood that, and that’s why he committed the bulk of his fortune to funding libraries that were built then in communities all around the country.”
Farley said town leadership wanted to purchase the library building after it closed so it would maintain a community use rather than become privately owned.
“It’s very important to our community to keep that because of the history of that building, and it is a beautiful, beautiful building,” Farley said. “There’s a lot of history there for a lot of people in town, and we just wanted to preserve that.”
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The building features a brick exterior with a Spanish-style clay tile roof, while the interior has woodwork along the ceiling and doorways and a circulation desk that will remain in place.
“When it was a library, you’re in there and you’re looking at the books,” Farley said. “But now, since it’s empty, you just see the beautiful woodwork and just how awesome the building is, so we are very excited to make that part of our community.”
When Atlanta’s library closed last year, Farley connected with Dollase, who helped guide the town through the process of receiving a $200,000 loan from Indiana Landmarks’s Endangered Places Program to purchase the building from the Hamilton North Public Library. The loan, which the town paid back within three months, included covenants to ensure the architectural character of the building will be protected.
“Oftentimes we find out, like many other people do, about these things in the media where you have the building was being vacated or made available for sale, and that certainly raises a red flag as to what the future of that property is,” Dollase said.
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The town is working with Indianapolis-based Still Architecture + Design to retrofit the building to its new purpose as Town Hall. Along with offices for town leadership and Atlanta Utilities employees, the building will feature a meeting room for Town Council meetings and computers in the basement for residents to use.
“For us to have a Carnegie Library in our community, it has just been wonderful. The library was an important part of our community,” Farley said. “Once we can get moved in there and get it all renovated, I think it’s going to be great for our community.”
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Kudos to Jennifer Farley and the Town of Atlanta!
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To say that the Noblesville Carnegie library is now part of the city hall is a bit misleading. It is unrecognizable as it was basically destroyed when it was made a part of the city hall.