You know what they say “Having fun isn’t hard when you’ve got a library card.”
In the second installment of our series on the Louisville Free Public Library system, we’re heading downtown to the Main Library Branch. Did you miss our first piece? Never skip your summer reading, LOU.
The first page
The early precursors to Louisville’s modern library started in the 1800s and included the Polytechnic Society of Louisville and the Public Library of Kentucky. By the early 1900s, the two organizations folded into the newly-formed Louisville Free Public Library, the institution we still know and love today.
The LFPL Main Branch sustained damage during the flooding of 1937, but it remained open.
Photo courtesy UofL, ASC
Construction on LFPL’s first permanent home began in 1905, thanks to a grant from philanthropist Andrew Carnegie,and it opened in 1908. LFPL was segregated at the time, barring access to Black Louisvillians. The Western Branch Library opened that same year as the first Black-run public library branch in the nation.
In 1950, Louisville mayor Charles Farnsley and LFPL director Clarence “Skip” Graham jumped from the page to the airwaves by launching Louisville’s first public radio station,predating the first NPR broadcast by 20 years.
Over 50 years after its opening, the Main Branch library received a $4 million expansion in the form of the north building — that’s the one that borders Curran Way. It doubled the floor space of the library, from 42,000 sqft to over 100,000 sqft.
Reading ahead
The LFPL main branch continues to grow and change even today.
The Main Branch is slated for $11.1 million improvements as part of the “One Library One Louisville” campaign, including added study rooms, a new maker space, and the reopening the third floor, which closed in 2019 due to budget limitations. Fund raising is ongoing, though a recent grant from the James Graham Brown Foundation is helping to get the pages turning.
