The Big Timber Carnegie Library commissioned local artist
Dave HodgesDave Hodges to create this bronze sculpture to celebrate their one hundredth anniversary in the year 2014. It stands to one side of the front entrance of the library.
Entitled "Sharing The Story", the two children depicted are life sized with room on either side for library guests to sit and read along. The sculpture was unveiled December 17, 2015.
On the ground in front of the sculpture and bench is this plaque, commemorating the centennial of Big Timber's Carnegie Public Library.
One of seventeen in Montana and 1,679 in the country funded by Andrew Carnegie between 1886 and 1917, the Big Timber Carnegie Library was designed by the architectural firm of
Link and Haire of Butte and Billings and built beginning in 1913 at a cost of about $8,500, seeing completion in 2014. Of the $8,500, Carnegie supplied $7,500 and the town was forced to raise the remainder when a request for further funds beyond the $7,500 initially pledged by Carnegie was denied by Carnegie's secretary, then director of the library program.
Used as a library from the time it opened, the building remains the
Big Timber Public Library to this day.