Efforts to start a Seattle library had commenced as early as 1868, with the system eventually being established by the city in 1890.

Although the central Carnegie library has since been replaced twice, all the purpose-built branches from the early 20th century survive; however, some have undergone significant alterations.

The library answered 234,000 assisted information questions, and it hosted 3,500 classes, events and activities, as well as 341,000 public computer sessions.

[7] Seattle's first attempt to start a library association occurred at a meeting of 50 residents on July 30, 1868, but produced only minimal success over the next two decades.

They had raised some funds and had even obtained a pledge of land from Henry Yesler, but their efforts were cut short by the Great Seattle Fire of 1889.

[9] The first library opened April 8, 1891 as a reading room on the third floor of the Occidental Block—later the Seattle Hotel—supervised by librarian A. J. Snoke.

By 1895, the budget situation was so dire that Smith initially experimented with charging borrowers ten cents to borrow a book; the experiment was a failure and in 1896 the library moved to the Rialto, a building farther north on Second Avenue, far enough north that at that time it stood outside of Seattle's core.

At the Rialto, the library for the first time moved to an open-stacks policy, where users could browse through the shelves for themselves instead of presenting a request to a librarian.

[13] By January 6, Andrew Carnegie had promised $200,000 to build a new Seattle library; he later added another $20,000 when this budget proved inadequate.

[11] The new Carnegie library was built not far from the former university campus, occupying the entire block between 4th and 5th Avenues and between Madison and Spring Streets.

In August 1903, the city selected a design submitted by P. J. Weber of Chicago for a building to be constructed largely of sandstone.

In 1908, Carnegie donated $105,000 to build permanent branches in the University District, Green Lake, and West Seattle (all of which opened in summer 1910).

The land in the Central District donated by Henry Yesler to the Ladies' Library Association was traded to the parks department and the money was city funds were used to buy land and erect a library about 1 mile (1.6 km) east of downtown and named after Yesler.

In 1915, the library had collections in Croatian, "Dano-Norwegian" (Bokmål), Finnish, French, German, Italian, Lithuanian, Modern Greek, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Yiddish.

[14] Seattle also had established one of only three collections for the blind in the country west of the Mississippi River, the other two being in San Francisco and Portland, Oregon.

The economic revival brought about by World War II, and the post-war prosperity, began to bring the library out of its institutional stagnation.

By 1948, the circulating collection included 3,500 phonograph records, which were borrowed a total of 53,000 times that year, as well as 6,000 pieces of sheet music, 6,000 song books and piano albums, 200 reproductions of famous paintings, and 27,000 other pictures.

This funded, among other things, a new $4.5 million, 206,000-square-foot (19,100 m2) central library, designed in the International style by the Seattle firm of Bindon & Wright, and built on the same site as its Carnegie predecessor.

Dedicated March 26, 1960, it featured the first-ever escalator in an American library, a drive-up window for book pick-ups and was Seattle's first public building to incorporate significant new works of art.

The library's official web site writes that "the atmosphere in the opening weeks was likened to a department store during the holiday shopping season.

The new Central Library loaned out almost 1 million volumes in its first nine months, a 31 percent increase over the previous year's circulation."

A library that had been "struggling with disinterest in a shabby headquarters" now found itself "loved to tatters," with greater demand than it could readily satisfy.

The Magnolia Branch was designed by Paul Hayden Kirk and incorporates the Japanese influences found in much Northwest architecture of the era.

[8] In the 1970s and into the 1980s, The Seattle Public Library experienced another period of tight budgets and constricted services, but the picture was never as bleak as in the Great Depression.

After the Great Recession resulted in eight separate operating budget cuts between 2009 and 2012,[22] in November 2012 Seattle voters passed a 7-year levy to restore services.

The levy enabled all branches to provide Sunday service (15 previously did not), increased the number of branches with 7-day-a-week service from 12 to 14, added to the maintenance and repair fund, and provided new funds to purchase physical materials, electronic content, and additional computer equipment.

The board of trustees ultimately rejected the proposal on October 28, 2015, citing negative public feedback and other pressing uses for the funds.

[30][31] Five branches were reopened in April to provide public bathrooms to unsheltered and homeless people in the city, but other services remained closed.

[35] The library's checkout and online services were shut down by a ransomware attack in late May 2024 after a period of scheduled maintenance.

[8] The Seattle Central Library opened in 2004 and was designed by Rem Koolhaas and Joshua Prince-Ramus of the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA)[39] in a joint venture with LMN Architects and Front Inc. [d] Facade Consultants.