Good morning. It’s Wednesday. Today we’ll find out why some libraries will receive checks for $10,000 that they are not expecting. We’ll also get details on an immigration raid in Lower Manhattan.
If a check for $10,000 that you weren’t expecting came in the mail, how would you spend the money?
It’s a question that nearly 1,300 libraries will be facing before long.
The checks will be sent by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, in part to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary next year. Officials hope that the response will be different from the one that staff members got when they called to ask for mailing addresses — without saying anything about checks in the mail.
Many of the libraries hung up, apparently suspecting a hoax. This is the first time the Carnegie Corporation has said why it made the calls.
Dame Louise Richardson, the Irish political scientist who has been the president of the Carnegie Corporation since 2023, told me that the checks will go out to each of the libraries built and paid for by the steel mogul turned philanthropist Andrew Carnegie more than a century ago.
The Carnegie Corporation, a nonprofit that he set up before his death in 1919, says that he underwrote the construction of 1,681 libraries from 1886 on. “We haven’t been in contact with them,” she said, explaining that the Carnegie Corporation had largely focused on other projects since the 1920s.
But Richardson felt that this was a moment when she wanted to promote what libraries do. “Libraries are intrinsically democratic institutions,” she said before quoting Carnegie himself, who called libraries “cradles of democracy” that “strengthen the democratic idea.”
“This was part of the appeal to Carnegie,” she said. “Whether you’re a president or a pauper, when you walk into a library, you have access to the same information.” A moment later she acknowledged that “obviously the book banning has politicized them to some extent, but for the most part, libraries are not politicized.” And libraries collectively remain one of “the few trusted civic institutions we have in this polarized world.”
But how many Carnegie libraries are still out there?
In recent months the Carnegie Corporation staff has tracked down 1,280 of them, including roughly 750 that still occupy their original Carnegie buildings, and created an interactive map showing where they are. Some 66 are in New York City, including 39 branch libraries in Manhattan (among them the Muhlenberg library, on West 23rd Street, whose facade is shown above).
Carnegie built four more on Staten Island and nine in the Bronx (six of which are still operating and are branch libraries in the New York Public Library system). He was responsible for another 21 in Brooklyn (of which 18 are now part of the Brooklyn Public Library) and seven in Queens (of which four are still in operation, run by the Queens Public Library).
In the case of those and others that are now part of larger library systems, the checks will be sent to the main address, not the Carnegie branches themselves. But the checks will be checks, not electronic funds transfers, and no strings will be attached.
“We will say to everyone: They’re free to spend the money however they like,” Richardson said. She mentioned programs some might want money for, like teaching media literacy “and helping educate people to recognize mis- and disinformation.” She also talked about $4 million in grants that the Carnegie Corporation has already given to the three library systems in New York City for English language and work force training classes for adults, along with courses to prepare teenagers for college and careers.
I was still surprised that the first reaction to the calls to the libraries had been to slam down the phone.
“Reaching out to them and asking for contact information and telling them we were planning to give them a gift” — without saying that the gift would be a check for $10,000 — “generally had the result of people assuming that we were scammers. Such are the times we live in,” she said. “You know, if you get a call out of the blue, somebody says they want to give you a gift, it’s not unreasonable.”
Weather
Expect a sunny sky with a chance of showers and temperatures nearing the mid-60s. At night, temperatures will drop to the high 40s.
ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect today.
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Immigration raid on Canal Street
Dozens of masked agents descended on TriBeCa around Canal Street in a display of force by the Trump administration. Their raid was apparently aimed at a stretch of sidewalk where African men regularly sell counterfeit luxury goods — watches, sneakers and purses with fake designer labels.
The operation led to only a small number of arrests. As word spread on social media, a small group of protesters chased some of the officers as they headed toward 26 Federal Plaza, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement has offices.
Many of the migrant vendors appeared to have been warned that the raid was coming, but it surprised and confused tourists and pedestrians. Many officers wearing vests that said “Homeland Security Investigations” clambered out of unmarked vehicles on nearby Lispenard Street.
Colin Thompson, a photographer who works at a studio on Broadway and saw the agents arrive, said he did not believe that any of the migrant men who were detained had been selling anything. Many, he said, had just been smoking cigarettes.
Mor Ndiaye, 38, was at Church and Canal Streets when the agents showed up. He said that a group of agents had surrounded him, pushed him to the ground — hurting his knee — and cuffed him. “They asked me if I’m legal so I gave them my ID,” said the man, who told them that he was from Senegal and had been in the United States for 20 years. “They checked, and then they let me go.”
METROPOLITAN diary
All in the lip
Dear Diary:
It was years ago, and my wife and I were on our honeymoon. We hailed a cab near Central Park. I heard a trumpet blaring from the radio.
“Nice music,” I said.
“Harry James,” the cabby said. “He’s the best. I play a little trumpet, and I can tell you that it’s the lip that counts, and nobody has a lip like Harry James.”
“How about that,” I said. “I’m from the town in Texas where Harry grew up, and I actually took trumpet lessons from his father, Everette James, when I was a kid. I’m a fan of Harry’s too.”
We had the usual “it’s a small world” conversation and discussed some of the great Harry James hits.
After arriving at our destination, we paid the fare and began to get out of the cab.
“Wait,” the driver said. “One more thing.”
I thought we might have left something behind.
“You’ve got to tell me,” he said. “Did he say it was all in the lip?”
— Robert Plummer
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Hannah Fidelman and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
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James Barron writes the New York Today newsletter, a morning roundup of what’s happening in the city.
The post Why Carnegie’s Libraries Are Getting $10,000 Checks appeared first on New York Times.
