Library Benefactor Andrew Carnegie

(LoC) On March 12, 1901, Andrew Carnegie, one of the world's foremost industrialists, offered the city of New York $5.2 million for the construction of sixty-five branch libraries. The Scottish immigrant's fortune eventually would establish many more libraries and charitable foundations.
Born in 1835, Carnegie immigrated to the United States in 1848 with his parents. Working in American industry and making shrewd investments, he amassed a fortune before the age of thirty. In the 1870s, he noted the potential of the steel industry and founded J. Edgar Thomson Steel Works near Pittsburgh, which eventually evolved into the Carnegie Steel Company. The company boomed, and in 1901, Carnegie sold it to financier J. P. Morgan for $480 million, received $250 million as his personal share, and retired. Continued