The Carnegie years: doubled by 1922, rebuilt by the WPA in 1937–38

1916–1938 · growth inside the gift

The first measure: Six years after the opening, the library's use was in print. The South Bend Tribune of 8 March 1922, as the nomination cites it, recorded a collection doubled since the City Hall count — 12,000 volumes — with more than 4,300 borrowers taking out an average of 2,000 books a month. The building the town had argued for as a symbol was being used as a library, at a rate of some sixty-five checkouts a day in a city of well under twenty thousand.

The WPA addition: By the later 1930s the city had nearly doubled the building again — in population past 28,000, and in a collection the nomination estimates at 26,166 volumes. The remedy was federal labor on a local plan: "The WPA spent $20,000 on labor for the addition to the Carnegie library." Architect Ernest W. Young of South Bend drew a small addition on the south and a large two-story addition on the east, holding a new children's room, two staff rooms, a book-repair area, and the furnace and coal rooms below. Bicycle racks installed in the work remained in place when the nomination was written sixty years later. One change measures the institution's growth better than the square footage: "for the first time, the librarian, Ella Hodges, was provided with an office." Ella Hodges is the second librarian's name in the city's record, standing in it by 1937–38, twenty years after Olive Long's part-time room.

The reopening: The finished building was shown at an open house on May 7–8, 1938, and the library's pamphlet for the occasion described "a more modern looking library radiating a live and useful spirit." The Carnegie library had now been built twice — once by a grant and a gift of land, once by relief labor — and both buildings stand inside the one that survives on Hill Street today.

Sources:

1. Fine, Carnegie Library nomination (1997), sections 7 and 8 — the South Bend Tribune of 8 March 1922 (12,000 volumes; 4,300 borrowers; 2,000 monthly checkouts); the 1937–38 WPA addition, its $20,000 of labor, architect Ernest W. Young, the rooms added, the remodeling's share of the work, the 26,166-volume estimate, Ella Hodges's first office, the murals and bicycle racks; Public Library of Mishawaka Holds Open House, pamphlet, 1938, quoted.