Five Tyler women’s clubs—the First Literary Club, Bachelor Maids, Quid Nunc, Sherwood Club, and Athenian Club—worked for several years as the Federated Women’s Clubs of Tyler to establish libraries for the growing East Texas town. In 1902, the Tyler Free Library Board sought funding from philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, who agreed to provide $15,000.00 for a library if the city supplied the building site and furnishings and maintained the library at a cost of at least $1,500.00 per year. A lot at the northwest corner of South College and West Elm was purchased, and community fundraising provided books, furnishings, landscaping, and telephone service. The Chicago architectural firm Patton and Miller designed the Italian Renaissance style building, with R.H. Downing of Tyler as architectural supervisor and D. Mahoney of Waxahachie as builder. The original building included children’s and adult’s reading rooms, a check-out desk, book shelves, and an office on the first floor, while the second floor contained an auditorium with a stage and two small dressing rooms; for many years, it was Tyler’s only public auditorium. A 1936 addition doubled the size of the original building and included murals depicting life in East Texas by Texas artist Douthett Wilson. The two-story masonry structure was built of buff brick and limestone, with a low-profile overhanging red clay hipped roof, keystones and cut stone embellishments framing the windows and doors, and a main entry topped by a broken pediment and stained glass transom.