Everett’s Carnegie Library opened on Saturday, July 1, 1905, during a period of renewed prosperity after the city’s initial boom of 1892 had been halted by national depression, and as industry, business buildings, residences, churches, parks, and schools were helping transform Everett into a modern city whose population tripled from 1900 to 1915 with many new immigrants. The library’s creation was driven by the Woman’s Book Club, founded in 1894, whose volunteers advocated for a public library, gathered first in private homes and later in the original Hotel Monte Cristo, collected 1,000 books through donations and appeals to clubs across the country, and opened the city’s first library in city hall on April 21, 1898, where it shared space with the fire department and city jail before moving to a small building at 2804 Rockefeller Avenue. With a $25,000 grant from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, the group’s goal of a first-class public library became reality in 1905, giving Everett one of its few public buildings, an architectural gem that offered free library services, served as a community meeting place and social hub, and provided the Woman’s Book Club with a permanent meeting room. The same women also helped found Everett’s first hospital, later pressed in Olympia for bookmobiles, public kindergarten, and women’s suffrage, and were associated with the creation of Washington’s first bookmobile, officially named Pegasus and called Peggy, which served schools and mills and was later acquired for restoration in 1994 by the North Everett Rotary Club. The library also stood within Andrew Carnegie’s broader legacy: after rising from poverty in Scotland and immigrant beginnings in the United States to great industrial wealth, he gave $350 million to libraries and other institutions supporting learning, culture, ethics, and peace, and Everett’s Carnegie Library became one of 2,509 library buildings worldwide established through his grants and one of 44 built in Washington State from 1901 through 1916.