The land was given by the Land and Building Company and Andrew Carnegie paid for the building itself. This description of the building comes from the "St Anne's on the Sea Express" of 10 January 1906 - "It is convenient and effective in arrangements and presents an imposing appearance. The style is an adaptation of Victorian Renaissance……The main entrance leads through to a vestibule to a large octagonal hall. Lighted by clerestory windows and surmounted by a domed roof. On the right side of the entrance hall is a niche containing a bust of Sir Walter Scott.",  Pevsner's "Buildings of England - Lancashire:North" describes the building as "...every inch the early 20C Carnegie Library. Low, Baroque of red brick and buff terracotta with a corner entrance flanked by tiny oculi and an octagonal domed tower rising behind. Light and airy inside, with a range of low arches to one side and friendly bays on the other". In the Library's first Annual Report submitted in July 1907, it states that prior to 1 April 1906, 1500 borrowers' tickets had been issued although "a large proportion were not generally in use". In the subsequent year, another 637 had been issued to bring the total to 2137. The number of books issued in the year ending Mar 1907 was 48,468 – the vast majority of those being fiction. A writer for the St Anne's on the Sea Express might have remarked on this. In the article on the opening of the Library on 10 January 1906, it was commented that "The reading of novels is not calculated to bring out the best that is in men and women" which was reason for also stocking the library with volumes that might benefit the more "serious side" of mankind, such as "Books treating of poetry, travel, social science, political economy, natural history, philosophy etc." In the years after the opening of the building the service expanded and by 1929 an extension was thought to be urgently required. The Council were granted permission to borrow £2,000 to carry out the building in April 1930 and in March 1931 tenders for the work were accepted. The building work was carried out by John Heap and Sons of St Anne's and the constructional steelwork by John Booth and Sons of Hulton Steelworks, Bolton. The extension was opened on 25 September 1932 and a reorganised lending department opened on 9 October 1931. The first Librarian in charge, appointed in July 1905, was a Mr T P Thompson who had come from Bolton where he had worked at the Bolton Free Library for 14 years.