Three city lots in Old Strathcona, a block north of Whyte Avenue, hold a two-storey brick library with Ionic columns at the door. The Strathcona Public Library at 8331 104 Street opened in 1913, cost $27,000, and exists in its present size because the library board turned down Andrew Carnegie’s $15,000 and the standard plan that came with it.
October is Canadian Library Month, which the Canadian Federation of Library Associations marks each year, and this building is a fair place to spend some of it. Plenty of people assume a library this old was a Carnegie gift, since the Scottish-American steelmaker paid for so many across the country. This one wasn’t.
Key facts
- The library was built in 1912 and 1913 for $27,000, paid by the newly amalgamated City of Edmonton, according to the Canadian Register of Historic Places.
- In 1910 the Strathcona Library Board declined a $15,000 Carnegie Foundation offer tied to a small standardized building, per the same register entry.
- The City of Edmonton named it a Municipal Historic Resource on July 27, 2004, and the municipal record credits architects Arthur G. Wilson and David E. Herrald and builder William Deitz.
- The Province of Alberta recognized it as a Provincial Historic Resource on February 16, 2006.
The Board Told Carnegie $15,000 Was Too Small
Strathcona was a city by 1907 and had a university by 1909, and its library board expected the town to keep growing. According to Alberta Historic Places, the board asked Carnegie’s foundation for $25,000 and was offered $15,000. Mayor John Joseph Duggan and E.L. Hill said no and raised the money locally.
Strathcona and Edmonton amalgamated in 1912, and the bill for the building landed with the new city. A refusal like that looks wise in hindsight. It cost something, though, because a bigger building is also a bigger building to heat, repair and staff.
A Men-Only Reading Room Sat in the Basement
The original plan put library services on the main floor, an auditorium upstairs and a men’s reading room and meeting room below. That made it a place for lectures and social evenings as much as for borrowing books. In 1948 the basement became a children’s library.
Old doesn’t mean admirable, and it doesn’t mean permanent either. The building changed its mind about who belonged in it, which is part of why it was still useful when the next test arrived.
The Public Saved the Building Before the Paperwork Did
By the late 1960s the second floor couldn’t carry the weight of the books. In 1970 the director of the Edmonton Public Library tried to close the branch, and public opposition stopped it, though the collection and hours were cut hard. The history of the building then runs in a telling order. The province registered it in 1976. A $250,000 restoration followed in 1984 and 1985, funded by the sale of the old downtown library. The city designated it in 2004, and a restoration and expansion that closed the library in 2005 and 2006 added a semicircular wing and nearly doubled its size.
Small civic buildings rarely fall to a villain. They fall to a budget line, a failing floor and a reasonable-sounding memo, and the one thing that has reliably stopped that here is a crowd of people who used the place and said so. The register entry came after them, not before. Heritage money that waits for a declaration will keep showing up too late for the buildings nobody is using. Keep a small building working, with a children’s shelf and a room people can book, and someone will still be around to complain when the floor gives.
The Ionic columns at the door stand where the board set them in 1913, and anyone can walk between them to get in. Historic Edmonton has also listed a branch history tour if you want the building explained on site. The same stretch of Old Strathcona holds the story told in the look at the Old Strathcona historic area and the Ritchie Mill, which sits in the register twice. For another public building that was repurposed when a city needed it, read how Victoria School spent the 1918 epidemic as a hospital.
