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GREAT BEND
EARLY LIBRARY HISTORYIn 1896, a group of women met together to read Shakespeare in an attempt toward cultural improvement. Soon the Progress Club was formed, followed by the Athenian Club. These two groups of ladies, together with the help of the Commercial Club, supported a public reading room.
THE CARNEGIE LIBRARY
The credit for obtaining a Carnegie library in Great Bend is given to F. Vernon Russell and Ora Dawson. Andrew Carnegie offered $12,500.00 for a building on November 14, 1906. An election was held and the voters agreed to levy a library tax. The first library board assembled for a meeting on January 12, 1907.
A site was chosen on the corner of Forest and Williams; the old Central School occupied it at the time. The architectural firm of Hare, Anderson and Smith, of Iola, was engaged to draw up the plans. The contractors were F. H. Crites and F. R. Beatty, of Kansas City, Mo. The total cost of the building was $14,236.91. The building was dedicated August 14, 1908. Professor J. W. Mayberry, of Oklahoma City, gave the dedicatory address. The ladies of the book committee of the library board secured donations of $3,000.00 for books. Over 2,000 volumes for the new library were obtained by the time the library was opened. The family of the late J. V. Binkman installed the fireplace in the reading room.
DESCRIPTION OF THE BUILDING
The building, designed in the Eclectic, Neoclassical tradition, was rectangular, two-stories above a raised basement. The exterior was of red brick with white stone trim on the windows and the water-table. One of the more significant features of the building was the creative use of brickwork seen in the quoins at the corners, banding on the corners that form the projecting pavilion, and in the entablature and the parapet as wel1 as the towers which flank either end of the parapet. Paired semi-circular Ionic columns define the projecting pediment. The main double door was topped by a semi-circular transom. Windows on the first floor were one-over-one, double hung with a transom sandwiched between a rectangular lintel topped with a flared lintel with a keystone. There was a large dentalled cornice with a frieze bearing the name of the library.
LATER LIBRARY HISTORY
The second floor of the building, sometimes called the auditorium, was used for dances, large meetings, community theater and often for socials and school classrooms. The second floor was not reinforced so in later years it was used only for the reference collection, records and the record listening room. For forty years the second floor was plagued by damage caused by an irreparable leaky roof. By 1963, it
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