A Carnegie library opened in 1914 is still a lifeline for this rural Kansas town. With no popups.
The Peabody Township Public Library in Marion County as it appeared in October 2025. The library, which opened in 1914, was one of dozens of Carnegie libraries in the state. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector)
PEABODY — Sunshine from the front bay windows of the Peabody Township Public Library brushes the desks and chairs and books inside with a natural warmth no electric light can match.
This scene, or something near to it, has repeated itself every afternoon since the library opened in 1914. The bay windows, set beneath patterned stained glass transoms, are on either side of the front door. The wooden chairs are the same chairs the first patrons used all those years ago, although they have since been refinished.
Over the circulation desk is a black-and-white photo of Emma Christ, the librarian in charge at the opening. On behalf of a civic committee, Miss Christ wrote to Andrew Carnegie asking him to fund a new library building in this railroad town in east-central Kansas. And he did.
I’ve come to Peabody to visit the birthplace of the first free library in Kansas. At a time of cultural uncertainty, what better place to find comfort than a civic temple to propagation of fact?
My connection to libraries is deep, from prowling the stacks as a kid at Johnston Public in my hometown of Baxter Springs to peering through the glass floors at the Kansas State Library at the Statehouse. I have measured my reach as a writer by how many card catalogues, online and otherwise, my works have appeared in. Libraries have always been my refuge, but they are under increasing attack from proposed Trump-era budget cuts, coordinated book-banning attempts, and a wrongheaded perception that libraries are useless in a digital age.
Rodger Charles, the Peabody library director, an expressive man with a full beard and blue braces over his striped blue shirt, told me that libraries are essential for communities. In many ways, he said, the Peabody library was the heart of town, providing not only books and programming but reliable connectivity. It wasn’t unusual, he said, to see residents huddled on the steps outside at 2 a.m. during a winter storm to connect to library Wi-Fi.
“Man, it’s a lifeline,” he said. “It breaks my heart when people look at the library as irrelevant because they think nobody reads anymore.”
Peabody Township Public Library director Rodger Charles says the library, opened in 1914, is a lifeline for the community. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector)
Books are still his No. 1 checkout, Charles said, and the library has a lot of them — 9,000. As we chatted, one of the library’s 1,100 registered patrons approached the circulation desk with a romance novel.
Oct. 5 is the kickoff of the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week. Charles told me the library has had no books challenged since he arrived in 2011, although he did pass along a complaint about rough language in a western that was part of a regional library system travelling collection.
“I’ve got some books in here people don’t like,” he said. “But I wouldn’t being doing my job if I didn’t.”
The Peabody library was among 63 in Kansas funded by Carnegie in the early 20th century, including four academic ones. Just about every town of more than 1,000 inhabitants had a Carnegie library, and today about a third of them, like the ones in Peabody and Pittsburg and Oswego, are still working libraries. A dozen have been demolished and the rest are either vacant, have been repurposed for other uses, or — like the old municipal library building in Emporia — for sale.
But the Peabody library is not just an example of a surviving Carnegie library. It is also the oldest free library in the state of Kansas. The brick building is the successor to the library founded in 1874 that, unlike private libraries, did not charge a subscription fee of $25 or so. Instead, the books were loaned free to anyone — a citizen or a student or even a stranger — deemed trustworthy enough to return them.
The benefactor of that first library was F.H. Peabody, the town’s namesake, a resident of Boston who was the former vice president of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway. When Peabody visited the town shortly after its founding in the 1870s, he announced he would donate money for a library and its furnishings if the town would furnish the site.
That first library was a wood frame building, and Peabody sent 2,000 books and periodicals from Boston to get it started, according to Marcia Sebree, president of the Peabody Historical Society. It’s not difficult to imagine what the first building would have looked like; all you have to do is go around to the back of the present library and the well-maintained building is there, looking about as it did in 1874.
The wooden library building has travelled around town, having been moved from its original location in 1914 out to the old state fairgrounds and park and used by the Women’s Relief Corps to serve meals to Civil War veterans. It was restored in 1927 and placed at its current location in 1960.
The building is the local historical society now, and it’s filled with the kind of collective memory that builds up in a community over time. There’s a ledger containing the names of patrons and the books they checked out and returned in the 1870s, for example, and a cabinet containing the wooden models of a Heinkel bomber and other airplanes carved by German POWs interred at Peabody during World War II. There’s also memorabilia from the Joker Windmill Co., various period firearms, and a room full of dolls. But the northeast corner of the reading room, where Miss Christ sat and presumably wrote her letter to Andrew Carnegie, is still preserved, more or less as it appears in an old photograph.
The Carnegie Corporation agreed to provide $10,000 for a building to replace the frame structure, according to “The Carnegie Legacy in Kansas,” a 1985 publication by Allen Gardiner. The local committee chose a design similar to the one used for the Carnegie library in Galena, Illinois, and architect A.A. Crowell of Wichita drew up the plan. The M.R. Stauffer Construction Co. was awarded the construction bid. The library opened April 18, 1914.
The building was refurbished in 1978.
If you’re curious about how the building looks now, there’s a virtual tour on the library website.
The Peabody library survives, Charles told me, through the township mill levy and a combination of grants. In addition to the full-time director position, there are three part-time staffers. The library hosts a variety of events, from author talks to spam carving. Last month’s event with Daniel Markowitz, the author of a novel about a German POW hired to work for a Mennonite family near Peabody, drew 70 people, Charles said.
The first free library in Kansas was establishing in this building at Peabody in 1874. (Max McCoy/Kansas Reflector)
More than 2,800 Carnegie libraries were built from 1883 to 1929.
Carnegie, who was born in Scotland in 1835, came to America as a boy and eventually became the richest man in the world through his steel empire. He attributed much of his success to the kindness of Col. James Anderson, a former officer in the war of 1812 who opened his personal library of 400 volumes to Carnegie and other working-class boys of Allegheny, Pennsylvania.
After making his fortune during an era of robber barons, Carnegie began giving it all away, confounding other industrialists. His favorite form of philanthropy was to endow libraries, in honor of Anderson.
“The man who dies rich dies disgraced,” Carnegie famously said.
The paradox was that Carnegie gave away millions that were made on the backs of laborers in his hellish mills. Like Alfred Nobel — the man who invented dynamite and then created a global prize for peace — Carnegie may have been trying to buy some existential dispensation.
Another reason the Peabody library may have remained viable after more than a century is because the town never fluctuated much in size, never increasing beyond 3,000. In other towns, Carnegie libraries were faced with expensive remodeling or major expansions to meet space and patron demand.
In my hometown of Emporia, there were two Carnegie libraries.
One was an academic library, the Anderson Memorial, located on the (now defunct) College of Emporia campus and opened in 1902. After a succession of owners, including Emporia State University, it has now been restored and is in private hands.
The other is the old Carnegie public library on Sixth Street, dedicated in 1906. The building served until 1979, when a new library building next door was dedicated. The old building then housed the county historical society but was left empty after the society moved to Commercial Street in 2016. The old library building was used for storage until 2020.
On Oct. 1, the Emporia City Commission put the old library building on the market for 90 days. If there are no takers, the city will face demolishing the building, at a cost of up to $400,000, among other options. City estimates for repair and renovation of the brick building exceed $2 million.
Other cities face similar decisions with their aging Carnegie buildings.
Personally, I never met an historic old building I didn’t like. It would be nice if we could save them all, because what we lose is not just space, but a community’s shared history. Nobody, of course, wants to pay for that. But we have been paying for it, all along, through the burden deferred maintenance has had on our communities.
We should have been investing in the upkeep of our century-old Carnegie library buildings all along. Built in an age when public structures were meant to last, they are municipal landmarks. The Peabody Township Library is an example of stewardship done right. But in too many other places the answer to aging infrastructure has been to put off maintenance and try to find buyers. How many homeless shelters or community centers or arts cooperatives could have been made from those fabulous old buildings that are now falling in on themselves?
We also lose the example that Carnegie – did I mention he was the world’s richest man? — set for philanthropy. Imagine how revolutionary it must have been to build thousands of free libraries in an effort to democratize knowledge. Carnegie libraries were the original World Wide Web, bringing news and information from across the globe to places like Peabody, Kansas.
It is not by chance that libraries, including the Peabody Township Library, continue to provide life skills and links to career training through a variety of programs for their patrons. Charles told me there is hardly an issue a public library doesn’t address, and he described the job of a librarian as helping put people — children, young adults, working people, seniors — in touch with the entertainment, information and services they need. One section of the library is devoted to a collection of books for young adults to help them cope with anger, depression and feelings of self-harm.
“There’s nothing you can’t find at the library,” Charles said.
Libraries remain one of the most vital elements in any community.
As enumerated by the American Library Association, libraries are safe spaces where history is respected. Unlike the internet on your phone, librarians will help you find the right book, are nonjudgmental, don’t track your reading history and won’t try to sell you anything. And they don’t engage in censorship.
We should treat libraries with the same respect and support we give other essential services. They are as important in their way as the police, fire department, and utilities like water and sewer. A public library reminds us not just of who we are, but who we might become. Today’s billionaire philanthropists should take their cue from Carnegie.
Emma Christ, the librarian who got the ball rolling for the Carnegie library at Peabody, retired in 1919 to move to New York and live with her sister and brother. She had worked for the library for 31 years. She never missed a day of work, the Peabody Gazette reported.
“The library in Peabody is noted,” the Gazette said, “not alone for being one of the most artistic buildings, but for the manner in which Miss Christ conducted it.”
Thank you, Miss Christ.
Max McCoy is an award-winning author and journalist. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.