Our first new library, Minneapolis Journal, August 19, 1906

Clay County Histories

Markus Krueger | Program Director HCSCC

The progress of construction on the new Moorhead Public Library has been the talk of the town all year. This is especially the case at my house, since my wife Megan Krueger is the director of that library. So I was very interested when I ran across Nellie Price’s account of how Moorhead’s first public library was built in 1906 (the building under construction will be our third library building).
Like many public libraries across the country, ours began with a grant from Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie was the Bill Gates of his era, in the sense that he had an absurd amount of money and he decided to give it away. Carnegie’s favorite cause was funding public library buildings. If locals agreed to fund the operations of a library, purchase the site, and fill it with books, Carnegie would pay for the building’s construction.
In December of 1903, Moorhead attorney George Perley approached the Moorhead Woman’s Club to see if they would take on the task of building the town’s first library, provided they could get Carnegie’s financial backing. The Moorhead Woman’s Club was the intellectual outlet and civic-minded study club for our town’s 25 most impressive women. Local Woman’s Clubs were the founders of several public libraries in our area, including Fargo, Barnesville, and Hawley. In 1903, they agreed to lead Moorhead’s push for a public library.
Sarah Comstock, Letitia Burnham, and Hattie Weld headed the club’s library committee. They collected donations from 72 people, raising enough money to purchase the lot for the building (where Regal’s Appliance store is today). The city council agreed to a special tax levy to pay for the operations of the building. The club’s committee merged into the city’s committee and new members were added. Bankers, attorneys, local elected officials, and Woman’s Club members pooled their talents, experience, and energy. They chose Fargo architect Milton Earl Beebe to build it.
Nellie Olson was hired to be our first librarian at a rate of $40 per month. Go to the Moorhead Public Library today and you’ll see the two downstairs public meeting rooms are named in honor of first librarian Nellie Olson and first library board president Sarah Comstock. Olson worked Monday through Friday, 4-6 and 7:30-9:30pm. Woman’s Club members took turns in alphabetical order staffing the library on Sundays.
The initial budget for books was $500, but the stacks were also swelled with book donations for a total of 1,321 volumes that first year. The building opened to the public on July 12, 1906, with a formal dedication ceremony on October 15. If everything goes according to schedule, our third new library will be ready for visitors in the Spring of 2026, in time for the 120th anniversary of that first opening day.
During construction, architect Milton Earl Beebe informed the library committee that it would be more expensive than they initially thought. Their $10,000 building would actually cost $13,500. They convinced Mr. Carnegie to donate an additional $2,000 and the city came up with the rest. The construction of our current new library faces similar challenges, such as rising construction costs. The Friends of the Moorhead Library are currently raising funds to help support this project, and gifts of $2,500 or more will be honored on a donor wall in the new library. If you would like to learn more about this project and donation opportunities of all sizes, contact Megan Krueger (kruegerm@larl.org).