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Take a tour back in time and take a look at what the library was before Central.
Central Library Reinvented
The Library Before Central
Andrew Carnegie and the St. Louis Public Library
The Architect
The Design
Construction A Century Ago
Renewal Underway
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The Library Before Central
The Library traces its history to 1865, when Ira Divoll, superintendent of the St. Louis Public Schools, established a subscription library - the Public School Library and Lyceum – in the Darby Building at 5th and Olive streets. Divoll intended the Library to act as a supplement to public education and as a means of self-education and culture: a library designed “for the whole people, like the schools themselves.”