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Origin and history

The Carnegie de Reims Library is an iconic Art Deco building built between 1921 and 1928 in the city centre. It was inaugurated on 10 June 1928 by President Gaston Doumergue and U.S. Ambassador Myron T. Herrick. Its funding, from a $200,000 allocation from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was intended to support the reconstruction of the areas devastated by the First World War, including Reims, whose town hall and part of the bibliographic collections had been destroyed in 1917.

The origins of the collections date back to the 18th century, with the confiscation of Jesuit books in 1764, enriched by revolutionary seizures (65,000 prints and 1,000 manuscripts from the abbeys Saint-Remi, Saint-Nicaise and the cathedral chapter). In the 19th century, private donations, such as Senator Victor Diancourt's, and the opening of a reading room at City Hall (1818) marked its development. Librarians Louis Paris, Eugène Courmeaux and Henri Jadart contributed to its management.

Designed by architect Max Sainsaulieu after a study trip on library innovations, the library stands out for its Art Deco decor: award-winning ironworks at the 1925 Exhibition, mosaics by Henri Sauvage evoking the arts and sciences, chandeliers by Jacques Simon, and glass windows by Jacques Gruber. The noble materials (onyx from Algeria, green marble) and Madeleine Lacourt's paintings complete this artistic program. The building, renovated between 2003 and 2005, is now dedicated to the preservation of 400,000 heritage documents, including 800 medieval manuscripts and 220 incunables.

His remarkable holdings include 100,000 books from the 16th to 18th centuries, local archives (25 000 volumes on Champagne-Ardenne), and specialized collections such as the Dreyfus case (donations by Pol Neveux and Fernand Labori) and the Pataphysics. Partially classified as Historical Monuments in 1983 (facades, hall, window of the reading room), it symbolizes both the remise resilience after 1918 and the alliance between American patronage and French heritage.

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