The Andrew Carnegie Birthplace Museum occupies the weaver's cottage on Moodie Street where Carnegie was born in 1835, along with a larger memorial hall built in 1928. The cottage rooms are furnished to show how the Carnegie family lived in the 1840s — cramped by modern standards, but typical of a working-class household in an industrial Scottish town. The weavers' trade is explained, and the social conditions that drove Carnegie's family to emigrate are clearly set out.
The memorial hall next door covers Carnegie's career in America and his extraordinary programme of philanthropy. The maps showing the distribution of Carnegie libraries around the world are striking — it was a genuinely global programme, operating on an industrial scale. The museum is small but well-managed, and the staff are enthusiastic. Admission is reasonable; budget an hour and a half.