Native Houstonian Emmett J. Scott and his boss Booker T. Washington secured a Carnegie Library grant to help pay for a new building.

It was designed by William Sidney Pittman, a prominent African American architect and the son-in-law of Booker T. Washington[4] and was constructed in 1913.

[6] Charles Norton Love, an African American civil rights activist and publisher of the Texas Freeman helped advocate for construction and funding of the library.

Through the work of librarian Julia Ideson and an all-black committee made up of Houston leaders, African Americans were active participants in planning and governing their own library.

However, the Carnegie Colored Library model "moved beyond the lobbying of local white librarians and city officials" to a national strategy in which black leaders could proclaim themselves "actors in the civic and cultural politics that influenced their city, the services it provided, and its built environment.