Carnegie Centre

Story

Carnegie Community Centre is located at 401 Main Street at the corner of Hastings Street, in the old Carnegie Public Library building in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, British Columbia.In 1901 Vancouver requested $50,000 from industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie for the purpose of building a library. Carnegie agreed, provided the City of Vancouver supplied the site and contributed $5000 a year. The original public library was completed in 1903. For decades, the top floor was the home of the Vancouver Museum. The Vancouver Public Library moved into a more spacious building at 750 Burrard Street in 1957 and the Carnegie building eventually fell into disrepair.Neighbourhood poverty activists from the Downtown Eastside Residents' Association convinced city council to turn it into a public space for local residents, and it opened as the Carnegie Community Centre in the 1980s. It now houses recreation facilities, a low-cost cafeteria, a branch of the Vancouver Public Library, and a variety of services and programs for the neighbourhood, which is one of the poorest in Canada. The Carnegie Centre is a drug- and alcohol-free place.The Carnegie Community Centre is owned by the City of Vancouver and funded by the Social Planning Department. It is open 9 a.m. to 11 p.m., every day of the year.