High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Ballard Carnegie Library, also known until 1963 as the Seattle Public Library – Ballard Branch, is a historic library in the Ballard neighborhood in Seattle, Washington. The library was predated by a freeholders` library in the 1860s, which eventually gave way to a reading room that was organized and funded by a women`s` group in 1901. With a grant for $15,000, among other funds, a new library for the then independent City of Ballard was created as a Carnegie library. The building, located at 2026 N.W. Market Street in downtown Ballard, opened to the public on June 24, 1904. Notable as the first major branch of the Seattle public library system, after Seattle annexed the City of Ballard into itself in 1907, and for employing one of the first African American librarians in Seattle, the Ballard Carnegie Library was in service until 1963, when a newer and more modern facility replaced it. After its sale, the old library building housed a variety of private commercial enterprises, including an antique shop, a restaurant and a kilt manufacturer.