The Carnegie Corporation of New York has a map of the libraries Andrew Carnegie funded around the turn of the twentieth century:

I have not studied this beyond the map but I am intrigued that the map seems to show a lot of libraries between roughly western Pennsylvania through Nebraska. The Midwest has a lot of libraries, except for Missouri which seems to have fewer. There are some pockets of libraries elsewhere; northern California, the Northeast. But Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Minnesota, and other midwestern states have a lot of libraries.

Why the Midwest? A few ideas come to mind:

1. Its population is growing rapdily at this time. (Population growth in the South and West would come later and the East Coast already had established communities.)
2. Did Carnegie’s life in Pittsburgh connect him to life in other midwestern locales or familiarize him with midwestern values?
3. These communities valued civic institutions, like libraries.

If someone had come along in the 1960s and wanted to help fund civic buildings, how much different would the map look?