Greenville, Illinois is an interesting small town located at the furthest reaches of my Metro East category. There’s a small college there, and some nice buildings. The house above is now a funeral home, while the Carnegie library below is one of the most unique I have ever seen. The reading room below the dome must be a spectacular place to browse books.
The downtown is lined with some beautiful buildings, many of which are undergoing renovation as we speak. It was a quiet Sunday, so there was not much happening.
The Greenville Carnegie Library is almost identical to the Paxton Carnegie Library, which is on the cover of the book “The Carnegie Library in Illinois” by Raymond Bial. Both were designed by Bloomington architect Paul O. Moratz. He designed dozens of libraries, as the prime of his career coincided with the era of Carnegie Library funding and construction. A few of them were side-domed, with Greenville and Paxton joining the stone and terra cotta Sycamore Carnegie Library as some of the most striking Carnegie Libraries ever constructed.
Thank you for the information on the library! The National Register nomination has not been digitized yet so I was not able to read it.