During December 1901, library’s chairman Charles J. Bronston solicited Andrew Carnegie for a donation for a new library. Carnegie was a Pittsburg steel magnate and philanthropist[1]. On January 20, 1902, Carnegie agreed to fund the construction of a new library building in Lexington. He agreed to...
Libraries
During December 1979, Joseph Hayse, a library patron, filed a class action lawsuit to force the local government to properly fund the library with the state minimum. State law required that public libraries be supported “at not less than 5 cents nor more than 15 cents per one hundred dollars of assessed property valuations.” For at least the last ten years, the city had refused to meet the minimum funding...
In February 1897, with Mayor Joseph B. Simrall’s encouragement, Mary D. Short[1], Ida W. Harrison and Miss Scott of the Woman’s Club of Central Kentucky, led an efforts to establish a free library in Lexington....
On November 29, 1800, the Lexington Library Association was chartered by a special act of the Kentucky General Assembly. The incorporators were Thomas Hart, James Morrison, John Bradford, James Trotter, John A. Seitz, Robert Patterson, John McDowell, Robert Barr, William MacBean, James MacCoun, Caleb Wallace, Fielding L. Turner, Samuel Postlethwait and Thomas T. Barr....
Following the Second World War, the population of Lexington and Fayette County doubled within the next decade and a half. With fixed city limits, the bulk of this grown occurred in the county. It was not until the early 1960s, that the City of Lexington expanded the city limits north along Paris Pike, east along Richmond Road and south along Tates Creek Road.
Kentucky Library Code:
The Kentucky...
Andrew McCalla
1799-1804
Richard Davidson
1804
James W. Hamilton
1804
Charles Bradford
1804
James Overton
1804-
Lewis H. Smith
-1808
David Logan
1808-1812
...
Location
Dates
Transylvania Seminary
1796-1796
McCalla’s Apothecary Shop
NE corner of Short & Market Streets, facing Cheapside
1799-1804
Public Square
NW corner of the Public Square,...
The librarian shall have power to deliver books to such persons and permanents residing in Lexington as are not shares of the Corporation, under the following regulations:
The person applying for books shall pay in advance to the librarian twelve and half cents per week, for the use of a single volume, or eighteen and three quart cents per week for two volumes the same shall not belong to a set. Where he...S1. The funds for procuring a Library are from the sale of Shares, from half yearly Subscriptions and from Fines.
There are to be no more than two hundred Shares. The price of a Share is Five Dollars; it is transferable.
Every holder of a Share pays three quarters of a dollar, on the first Saturday in every June and December – and after the money is due; he can take no book from the Library till...
The Lexington Public Library was originally established in 1795 as the Transylvania Library by wealthy citizens of Lexington, who “proposed the formation of a library for the benefit of the students of Transylvania Seminary – who has no sufficient library of their own – and for future pleasure and instructions of the citizens of Lexington.”
Tradition holds that the first meeting to organizing the library...
