c Library (wood), 45+60, 5,000 vols., $5,000.

The largely increased number of public library buildings erected in
recent years is a most cheering sign of the times. Since 1895, eleven
extensive new library buildings have been opened: namely, the Library of
Congress, the Boston Public Library, the Pratt Institute Library,
Brooklyn, the Columbia University Library, New York, the Princeton, N. J.
University Library, the Hart Memorial Library, of Troy, N. Y., the
Carnegie Library, Pittsburgh, the Chicago Public Library, the Peoria,
Ill. Public Library, the Kansas City, Mo. Public Library, and the Omaha,
Neb. Public Library.

And there are provided for eight more public library buildings, costing
more than $100,000 each; namely, the Providence, R. I. Public Library,
the Lynn, Mass. Public Library, the Fall River, Mass. Public Library, the
Newark, N. J. Free Public Library, the Milwaukee, Wis. Public Library and
Museum, the Wisconsin State Historical Society Library, Madison, the New
York Public Library, and the Jersey City Public Library.

To these will be added within the year 1900, as is confidently expected,
the Washington City Public Library, the gift of Andrew Carnegie, to cost
$300,000.

No philanthropist can ever find a nobler object for his fortune, or a
more enduring monument to his memory, than the founding of a free public
library. The year 1899 has witnessed a new gift by Mr. Carnegie of a one
hundred thousand dollar library to Atlanta, the Capital of Georgia, on
condition that the city will provide a site, and $5,000 a year for the
maintenance of the library. Cities in the east are emulating one another
in providing public library buildings of greater or less cost. If the
town library cannot have magnificence, it need not have meanness. A
competition among architects selected to submit plans is becoming the
favorite method of preparing to build. Five of the more extensive
libraries have secured competitive plans of late from which to
select--namely, the New York Public Library, the Jersey City Public
Library, the Newark Free Public Library, the Lynn Public Library, and the
Phoebe Hearst building for the University of California, which is to be
planned for a library of 750,000 volumes. It is gratifying to add that in
several recent provisions made for erecting large and important
structures, the librarian was made a member of the building
committee--_i. e._, in the New York Public Library, the Newark Free
Pu