Auburn Carnegie Library

Sal is a voice that rides along as you drive Washington's roads: the road ahead, the pass, the stories of the places you pass.

Before the Carnegie money came, Auburn's library moved around a good deal. A back room at Young's Bakery, then the back of Auburn Drug Store, then a second-floor room in the new city hall. The board asked for a $10,000 grant and got $9,000, and nobody was quite sure why. The land at 3rd Street NE and Auburn Avenue came as a gift from board member Arthur Ballard, so the taxpayers never spent an extra dollar on it. The architect, David J. Myers, wrote the contractor a good many letters about delays. The brick building runs 35 by 50 feet, and it opened with massive oak doors and a round fir-wood desk at its center. When the land stopped serving a library, it went back to the Ballard family. [1]