Building to Last

I grew up in a town with a Carnegie library. Constructed in 1904 thanks to a $27,000 grant from the industrialist Andrew Carnegie, the building served as the community’s public library for seven decades. It’s where my mom went to borrow books. By the time I was a kid, it had been converted into a public arts center, hosting classes and performances and giving countless families a place for creativity and connection. Today, the city still operates the building as an event space—one of my high school class reunions was held there.

As Sarah Cone writes in her cover essay, “Why Don’t Philanthropists Build Anymore?,” it would have been impossible to project the impact of the more than 2,500 Carnegie library buildings in quantitative terms that would pass muster with many modern strategic grant makers. Yet their benefit to the civic fabric of communities like mine has been immense and long-lasting.

Cone's argument is a challenge to those with extraordinary means to do extraordinary things. We live in a culture that endlessly celebrates trailblazing founders and risk-takers, yet our most financially successful fellow citizens seem to rarely extend the same ambition beyond the realm of business. While the titans of the first Gilded Age, like Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, applied their resources and managerial talent to constructing novel and lasting civic institutions, today's ultra-wealthy seem satisfied with the relative safety of writing big checks. Existing nonprofits, universities and other organizations do critical work, yet today, as global problems seem to be outpacing the capacity of such institutions, Cone's call to build is a timely provocation.

Please select this link to read the article from SSIR.