Wedged into an unpromising Fratton Road site across from the
former graveyard of St. Mary's Church and a next to a low rent
cinema later recycled as a snooker hall and now a block of
flats, this Carnegie branch library is a gem. The façade – a mix
of Edwardian baroque and free Renaissance styles is
pretentiously grandiose, given the scale of the building behind;
but if it is overblown then this could be excused as loud
proclamation of Andrew Carnegie's faith in the transformative
power of books. The plutocrat benefactor was born into a Fife
linen weaver's family in Dunfermline in 1835. Steam technology-
driven redundancy drove the family into taking their chances in
Pennsylvania in 1848. Andrew went on to become a folkloric
example of the poor immigrant boy made good in America. He went
from telegraph messenger boy to owner of the United States'
largest steel works in twenty-five years. When he eventually
came to sell his steel company to J.P.Morgan in 1901, the $480m
sale made him the richest man in the world