Shreve Memorial Library

Shreveport read long before this building held books. Women started a subscription Shreveport Library Association in 1890 at two dollars a year, men had a Mechanics Library, and the two merged in 1901 as the People's Library in the courthouse. Voters rejected a Carnegie library in 1903. A bond issue after the First World War paid for the Edwards Street library, which opened on December 26, 1923. The library moved to this former federal building after Walker and Walker renovated it between 1978 and 1980; an 1887 Custom House on the site had been razed in 1910.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Street Museum — steps away
  An 1866 bank building downtown that also held a Freedman's Savings and Trust branch in 1870, now a free LSUS-run museum with a Victorian parlor and the original vault.
• Shreveport Municipal Auditorium — 0.4 mi
  The Art Deco hall of 1929 where the Louisiana Hayride went out over KWKH from 1948 to 1960 and where Elvis Presley first played Shreveport on October 16, 1954.
• Shreveport Water Works Museum — 0.5 mi
  An 1887 brick pumping station on McNeill Street where Worthington steam pumps ran until 1980, now a free museum and a National Historic Landmark.
• Louisiana State Exhibit Museum — 3.1 mi
  A circular Art Deco museum of 1939 on the Shreveport fairgrounds, with a 1,000-year-old Caddo log boat, rotunda murals and dioramas of early Caddo Parish.

More markers nearby

• First City Market — steps away
• Selber Bros — steps away
• Strand Theatre — 0.2 mi
• Justin Gras — 0.2 mi