Forest Lodge

Many of us began our love of reading at one of the 1,689 Carnegie Libraries in the United States or the 125 in Canada built with money donated by Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Here is the one we lived at for our first formative years of being a bookworm. It holds the distinction of being the first Carnegie Library built in the state of Indiana.

We actually got there in a car of a slightly later model than the one pictured here in this 1912 photo. Probably a Lark station wagon, or more likely we walked there dragging along down the sidewalk after a longer-legged, teen-aged sibling. The image of the basement children's reading room that stays with us still is of the storybook characters in silhouette inlay on the cool smooth floor. We can still feel the lovely cool respite from the Indiana humidity we enjoyed while choosing books for the summer reading program that we faithfully participated in each year.


When we are looking for a good lake read or perhaps some DVD entertainment Up North, we have the good fortune to have a very well appointed library to go to. This library, in high contrast appearance-wise to the Carnegie model, was also made possible through the generosity of an individual, local philanthropist Mary Livingston Griggs.

Can you picture storytime being held in the lap of a friendly big brown bear?

Forest Lodge Library. "Free people read freely"