Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

The great thing in life is to try to please everybody, but that is impossible. Personally I always feel that the real thing is to be quite sure one is pleasing oneself. If a person pleases himself he always has the satisfaction of knowing that at any rate one person in the world is pleased. If a person thoroughly and conscientiously pleases himself the probability is that he pleases the majority also.

Comment

Comment

Via (Mrs) E.M. Wright’s biography (Wright 1932). The date is an educated guess – can someone with a BNA sub get me the article? Do Wright’s comments refer as well to Andrew Carnegie’s remarkable career?

There’s a review in The Builder:

The Carnegie Library at Windhill, in the Shipley district, was opened recently. Situated at the junction of Leeds-road and Fountain-street, near the bottom of Carr-lane, the building occupies a central position. Passing through the vestibule and a hexagonal entrance-hall, the visitor reaches the lending library, on each side of which are the reference library and the reading-room. Accommodation has been provided for about 8,000 volumes in the lending department and for fifty readers in the reading-room. The librarian’s room is placed between these two, the floor being raised to afford full supervision. Upstairs is a students’ room, a ladies’ room, a patent journal room, and lecture-hall, with anteroom and public lavatories for both sexes. The lecture-hall affords accommodation for 150 persons nominally, but by the adoption of the sliding partition system the whole of the accommodation on this floor has been made available for one room in case of necessity. In the anteroom provision has been made for the preparation of teas. The elevations are carried out in local stone, and the whole of the interior woodwork is in pitch-pine, varnished. The floors are constructed of steel and concrete, the vestibule, entrance-hall, and landing being laid with terrazzo mosaic and the remainder with pitch-pine boards. The furnishings are of pitch-pine and teak. The building is warmed on the low-pressure hot-water system and lighted by electricity. Mr. Abm. Sharp, Bradford, was the architect, and the work has been carried out under his superintendence by the following contractors:— Masons, Messrs. Wilks & Ingham; joiner, James Deacon; plumber, Mr. Samuel Jackson; plasterers, Messrs. J. & W. Bates; slater, Mr. Thomas Thornton; steelwork, Abm. Pulman & Sons, Ltd.; heating, Mr. S. Rushworth; ventilating, Messrs. P. H. Walker & Co.; carver, Mr. S. Charnock; tiling, T. & R. Boote, Ltd. (Builder 1906/01/27)

This via Russell Croft, who has a great early photo, and wonders “whether the likelihood of this building’s ultimate demise was inherent from its beginning” (Croft 2016/08/12).

In 1995 Bob Duckett commented:

Stranded in the midst of a busy road junction and superseded by a modern supermarket-funded new branch less than a mile away in Shipley, this building is currently rented by the Shipley Pentecostal Church and the Bradford Irish Music Association (the tricolour can just be seen over the entrance beneath the words “Carnegie Library”). The interior fittings are classic Edwardian leaded glass partitions and wood panelling in desperate need of conservation photography. My own feeble efforts were a failure – interior photography is not easy – though I did “remove to safe-keeping” the original craftsman-made fines box. That at least should survive the second millennium! (Duckett 1995)

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Original

The great thing in life is to try to please everybody, but that is impossible. Personally I always feel that the real thing is to be quite sure one is pleasing one’s self. If a person pleases himself he always has the satisfaction of knowing that at any rate one person in the world is pleased. If a person thoroughly and conscientiously pleases himself the probability is that he pleases the majority also.

76 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Andrew Carnegie (1) ·
• Architecture (5) ·
• Carnegie library (1) ·
• 📌Idle, West Yorkshire (5), old village northeast of Bradford ·
• Philology (5) ·
• Public library (2) ·
• Quarry (4) ·
• Self-interest (2) ·
• 📌Shipley, West Yorkshire (8) ·
• University of Oxford (2) ·
• Wright, Elizabeth Mary (1863-1958) (1), linguist and folklorist ·
• Wright, Joseph (1855-1930) (2), philologist, author of the English Dialect Dictionary, rose from humble origins in Idle but said "I have been an idle man all my life, and shall remain an idle man till I die" ·

All tags.

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