Niagara Falls Carnegie Library, Niagara Falls

The Niagara Falls Carnegie Library, located in the historic downtown area of Niagara Falls is a two-storey red brick building that exemplifies the Beaux-Arts architectural style. Erected in 1910, the building was the sixty-seventh of one hundred and eleven Carnegie libraries built in Ontario, and provided a permanent site for the city's previously nomadic book collections. It is also linked to the historical movement which advocated free access to educational and cultural materials for all citizens. Andrew Carnegie, the philanthropist behind the Carnegie Foundation, was one of America's wealthiest men at the beginning of the 20th century and dedicated much of his time and savings to providing resource centers to cities and towns all over United States and Canada through the library grants offered by the Carnegie Foundation.

The building's architectural features, an exemplification of the Beaux-Arts style, are striking. The two-storey, red brick building features a raised limestone block basement and yellow brick quoins. The polychromatic exterior is typical of the Beaux-Arts style, used to establish a decorative element. The building is a classical display of symmetry with a centrally located main entrance and front portico with brick columns and an egg and dart motif on the trim. The library also features a central gable with a closed pediment, and entablature with flat modillions and a semi-circular fanlight. The large Venetian style windows are a dominant feature. On the interior, the floors have been laid with hard wood and finished in natural oak.

The Carnegie Library played an important role in the community's early businesses and organizations, providing an open space for instructional seminars which allowed for the expansion of skills and knowledge in the community. Although this particular library has unique qualities associated with a local vernacular, its use of Beaux-Arts style with large windows is highly comparable to the majority of the Ontario libraries that have been built from the same Carnegie Foundation grants.