120 South Broad Street
Mankato, MN, USA

National Register of Historic Places - Mankato Public Library and Reading Room

Statement of Significance:

The Mankato Public Library and Reading Room is significant as a component unit of the Carnegie Library phenomena and for its imposing design and extensive use of local materials. The City of Mankato received a Carnegie grant in 1901 and agreed to furnish a site and maintenance for the building. According to an article in the Mankato Free Press. Carnegie's representative on the project hired the New York firm of Jardine, Kent, and Jardine to design the building despite protest by the Western League of Architects, who advocated a local architect. However, the local contracting firm of J.B. Nelsen and Company was hired for the construction, and the stone, cement, lime, and brick used in the building were locally produced. The Renaissance Revival design of the building is a departure from the usual columned Neo-Classic style of most Minnesota Carnegie buildings, and the ordered detailing of the unaltered exterior make the building an important element in the rapidly changing fringe of the downtown Mankato commercial district. The building functioned as a focus of community educational activity until a new regional library facility structed in the mid-1970s.