El Reno Carnegie Library

The Carnegie Library on South Bickford Avenue is a single-storey buff-brick building with a small Doric portico — modest by Carnegie standards, but the oldest of Oklahoma's Carnegie libraries and still doing its original job. The reading rooms have been carefully maintained, with a glassed-in display of early library cards and photographs.

Visitors are welcome to walk in during opening hours. There is rarely anyone else around, which is part of the charm. Combine it with the Canadian County museum and the Choctaw Avenue stations for a useful 45-minute downtown loop.

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A story
Andrew Carnegie's library fund built more than 1,600 free public libraries in the United States between 1886 and 1919. The El Reno building, opened in 1904, was the first of twenty-five in Oklahoma and is the oldest of the survivors. It has been continuously open as a public library for more than a century — a quiet but unusual record.

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