photo courtesy of Bill Cook

teele Memorial Library was built at it's at its Lake and Church Street site in 1923. Spending a Saturday morning every once in a while at the library was the price every student in Mabel Haupt's English class would eventually pay for learning how to research a paper correctly.

Years later, a visit to the old Steele Memorial building at the corner of Lake and Church Streets finds that the librarians are now shushing students at their newer location on Railroad Avenue. This picture was taken in 1999 when the library no longer occupied the building on Lake and Church.

Since 1893, the public library of Elmira and Chemung County has carried the name, Steele Memorial Library. It was the well planned gift of Mrs. Esther Baker Steele in memory of her husband, Dr. Joel Dorman Steele. The original Steele Memorial Library building was located in 1895 at the southeast corner of Lake and Market Sts., a plot which in the 1970s became a landscaped corner and parking lot of the Marine Midland Bank Building.

Dr. Joel Dorman Steele had amassed a modest fortune from the successful writing of textbooks, many with the help of his wife. He had the idea of providing a public library for the citizens of Elmira, but died before doing so. He left a letter to his wife stating his wishes and after his death, she loyally put the plan into action, setting aside annual portions of her income until the building fund was adequate. Building activities commenced in 1893 and in 1899, the first library moved into its new Lake and Market location.

When the library opened in August of that year, throngs of Elmira Area citizens came to see and honor this generous gift from the Steele family. Many brought their own gift of books. Ever since, there have been gifts now and then but none so large as the Steele and later the Carnegie ones.

Mrs. Steele had planned this original library building with rental office space whose income would support the library. But 30 years after the incorporation leading to that first library building, with annual appropriations dwindling and financial problems becoming insurmountable, the Carnegie Corporation announced that it was making a surprise gift of $70,000 in the Steele name. This gift led to the building at the new location at the southeast corner of Lake and Church Streets in Elmira.

The Carnegie gift came about incidentally as the result of a conversation between two men who had been college friends: Philip Sawyer, then a library trustee, and Henry C. Whitfield, the brother of Mrs. Andrew Carnegie and a Carnegie architect. Plans were drawn up with the City of Elmira agreeing to assist with the costs. But World War I intervened, stopping all construction.

After the war, with prices suddenly increased dramatically, the Carnegie Corporation raised its gift from $70,000 to $110,000 with the city of Elmira contributing $40,000 and agreeing to provide at least $15,000 annually for support. And contrary to custom and with Carnegie Corporation's approval, the building retained the name "Steele Memorial Library" and was opened for service on February 3, 1923.