Look up when you reach 100 South Crowder Street; the domed tower up there is an unusual thing to see on a Carnegie library. The building under it went up because the Women’s Club of Sullivan started a drive for a library in 1899, the Public Library Board formed in 1902, and by December 1903 the town had the site and the matching funds in hand. Andrew Carnegie put in $10,000, the cornerstone went down in June 1904, and the doors opened in January 1905 with 1,222 books on the shelves.
The two-story building is Bedford limestone, designed by architect Paul O. Maratz, restored inside to its 1905 look in 1986 and extended by 2,400 square feet and an elevator in 1995. It is still the main branch of the Sullivan County Public Library, with branches in Merom, Carlisle, Dugger, and Farmersburg, and the Merom branch is Carnegie-built too. The genealogy and local history collection lives here, and the state historical marker out front puts the story at reading height.
