Campus Expansion Project
The Port Townsend Public Library renovation and expansion is being made possible
in part by a major grant from the
National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor
The Port Townsend Public Library Foundation is eligible to certify qualified donations to match the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Challenge Grant CH-51077, which offers up to $500,000 in funding for the renovation and expansion of the Port Townsend Public Library at the Carnegie site.
All donations and pledges to the Capital Campaign will be gratefully used to meet the fundraising match required by the NEH Challenge Grant.
Project Resources
How Can You Help?
- Donate online or with a pledge card
- Purchase a Max Grover print or personalized tile online or at the library.
The Port Townsend Public Library belongs to the people. This Capital Campaign is a unique public-private partnership in fundraising. The City is working to find and secure as much federal and state assistance as possible, to keep the portion carried by City funds manageable. And the Port Townsend Public Library Foundation, a 501(c)(3) entity, is seeking private sector gifts.
- Gifts from individuals and families (with a goal of $1.0 million)
- Grants and gifts from foundations, corporations and other institutions (with a $1.5 million goal).
Rebuild Our Carnegie Library … The Next 100 Years
Throughout the Library's 100-year history, women and men of good will and clear vision have set themselves impossible goals—and achieved them. Some say that Port Townsend is the town where great dreams went unfulfilled. Not so. For in the bigger picture, it's where the greatest dreams, seemingly unrealizable, come true. Today's challenge is to continue the dream and ensure that our wonderful Library will be here serving our children, our grandchildren and generations to come. Together we can do in our time what our predecessors did in theirs.
The Mission
A modern library is, or should be, a key component of any community's education system. It's the place where people of any age or circumstance can come to learn about everything there is to know—information that helps them in their jobs, with their families, or in that vast and wonderful place called imagination.
No other community embraces its library and its crucial educational function more than Port Townsend. Whatever else we do, we devour information. Education is ingrained in our souls, hard-wired in the DNA of almost all our citizens.
Community leaders with vision and commitment, starting with those who made the dream a reality with Carnegie's help and on to the present, realized how key a component our Library is in helping to ensure the development and maintenance of a well-educated population. And through the years they have found, and nurtured, highly competent staff who share the philosophy and continually assure that the facilities, programs and collections can meet the challenges of new and different times. 
From the baby on her father's lap during story time to the octogenarian checking out a large-print book, from the teenager researching to give his high school essay that special touch to the laid-off worker seeking a new job, the Library and its personnel know that the educational tools they bring to the public are crucial to the life and well-being of the entire community.
