Carnegie
Purchased in 1929; Closed in 1974
Bartlesville's First Carnegie Library Building opened March 14, 1913 at Seventh and Osage Avenue. In 1929 it was remodeled into the district's administration building. The district's central office eventually moved to the Education Service Center in 1974.
Carnegie Library History
Beginning in 1908, the Tuesday Club campaigned for a public library for Bartlesville. The city appointed a library board and received a $12,500 grant from the Carnegie corporation to help with obtaining a site and erecting the building which opened on March 15, 1913 and operated as the library for fifteen years.
By 1927, however, the library had expanded from its original 2,000 volumes to 10,000 and was so crowded that the city was asked to give $25,000 for an addition to the building. Bartlesville willingly voted bonds for this amount, but through a technicality the action was void. Frank Phillips, the president of the Phillips Petroleum Company, had agreed to give the library $12,500 if the addition was built, but when the bond issue was disallowed, he made a new offer. It was suggested that the library be given space in Civic Center Building, then being erected, and Mr. Phillips generously gave $5,000 to fit up the rooms allotted for the purpose. The move was made in 1928 and in 1929 the building was given by the city to the school district, which paid for various remodels to repurpose it as the district's administration building with offices for the superintendent and board of education.
The first two librarians were Miss Mabel Blakeslee, 1913-1916 and Miss Myrtle Weatherholt, 1916-1919. Miss Ruth W. Brown, was the third librarian from 1919-1950. Miss Brown was fired in 1950, by which time she was at the library in the Civic Center Building, on the pretext that she was a communist and had placed subversive literature in the library, but in reality her dismissal was because of her desegregation activities, including helping form a group affiliated with the Congress of Racial Equality and taking two African-American teachers, Mary Ellen Street and Clara Cooke, to the dining booths at Hull's Drugstore in 1950, where they were refused service.
Transition to Law Office
The Church of Christ, then at Sixth and Dewey, purchased the building in 1974 for $47,500 and used it for overflow classes for several years. After a new building on Adams Blvd. was constructed, they sold it to Richard Kane.
Richard Kane, after whom Richard Kane Elementary is named, was a member of the Bartlesville Landmark Preservation Council. Preserving the old Carnegie Library was of special interest to him. He had attended kindergarten in the lower level of the library, used it as a child, and attended school board meetings as the school district's attorney in that building from 1947 until the offices were moved in 1974. The restoration, in 1980, of the old Carnegie Library building as his offices was a lasting tribute to the Bartlesville community. The building has received a historic preservation award and has been placed on the Oklahoma Landmarks inventory. The Carnegie building is now the law offices of Kane, Kane, Kane, and Roark.