Lexington Public Library
1795 - Lexington Library Co. is established. The subscription library raises $500 to buy 400 books, which were placed in the Transylvania Seminary. The company's sole support through the next century comes from subscribers. It suffers financial problems, fires and frequent moves.
1898 - Lexington, having been named by the state a city of the second class permitted to open a free library, leases the Lexington Library Co. building and all its possessions with the option to own the library if the venture proves successful after five years. Before the five-year lease is up, industrialist Andrew Carnegie donates $60,000 to erect a library building in Lexington. The Lexington Library Co. transfers ownership of its possessions to the new library and donates $9,000 to the project.
1905 - The new Lexington Public Library opens at Gratz Park, three years after ground is broken.
1949 - The library opens the Laura Carroll Branch at 572 Georgetown Street to serve the city's African Americans. Prior to this, African Americans used the Negro Reading Room in the Main Library. The branch closed in 1951 when services at the Main Library were desegregated.
1972 - The library opens the Southland Branch on Southland Drive. Other branches follow: the Lansdowne Branch in 1976 on Tates Creek Road and the Eastland Branch in 1979 on Winchester Road. The Southland Branch becomes the Southside Branch when it moves to Holwyn Drive in 1985.
1984 - The Northside Branch opens on Russell Cave Road. It is replaced with a new branch next door in 2008.
1989 - The Central Library opens on East Main Street, a five-story, 110-400-square-foot building replacing the two-story, 18,000-square-foot Main Library.
1992 - The Eagle Creek Branch opens, replacing the Eastland Branch.
1997 - The Beaumont Branch opens, replacing the Southside Branch.
2001 - The Tates Creek Branch opens, replacing the Lansdowne Branch.
2004 - The Village Branch opens on Versailles Road. An expansion opens in 2008.
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