[2] In 1901, industrialist Andrew Carnegie offered $25,000 for the construction of a public library, on the condition that the city would supply the land and maintain the building.

A lot of ninety feet square was conveyed by the city to the Board of Education for this purpose, and plans were drawn up by local architect James B. Stewart.

Serving lunch and dinner, the restaurant featured a lounge with a square island bar on the first floor, and dining tables on the mezzanine.

Pictured in various postcards showing the library and its environs, the monument was probably erected by the Grand Army of the Republic in the 1890s.

It vanished in mysterious circumstances in 1915, amid controversy over plans to construct a Confederate monument at Ritter Park.

[2] On the library's south side, facing Fifth Avenue, Socrates has pride of place directly above the portico, flanked by Homer to the left, and Plato on the right.

On the west side of the building, facing Ninth Street, are Shakespeare (spelled "Shakspere"), Macaulay, Schiller, and Longfellow.

A similar list of names is inscribed above the windows of the Carnegie Library at Binghamton, New York, which also opened in 1904: Shakespeare, Homer, Plato, Virgil, Dante, Bacon, Hugo, Emerson, Lowell, Goethe, Schiller, Longfellow, and Hawthorne.