The first year after the library's reopening the county appropriation was set at 3 cents per $100 valuation. This gave the library an income of $38,000, a 26% increase over the budget in the year before it had closed. But the funds were still far short of the American Library Association standard for a library serving a city the size of Charlotte.
But close it did. On the evening of June 30, 1939, the doors of the Charlotte Public Library were locked. The staff went home, and for the first time in almost fifty years the city was without a library.
In 1929 the Charlotte Public Library became involved with the Julius Rosenwald Fund in a library demonstration project. The project was designed to provide incentive for increased local support. The library would receive $80,000 from the fund spread over five years. Each year the Rosenwald support would decrease and local funds would increase to keep the total library income at about $66,000 per year.
Lack of space for both books and programs also was a serious problem. In 1915, Andrew Carnegie was approached again for funding. His $15,000 gift was used to build an annex at the rear of the original building. The annex housed a separate Children's Department of about 1,200 square feet and, in the lower level, a meeting room with a small stage where the Little Theater of Charlotte first performed.
Annie Smith Ross, the first librarian at the Carnegie Library, had gone to Atlanta after the death of her first husband to study library work. She brought back many advanced ideas. She believed in the positive influence of books and the library in the community, setting up a separate area in the library for the use of children - a very modern idea in the early 1900s. She helped organize and served as the first president of the North Carolina Library Association bringing its first conference to Charlotte in 1904.
The Carnegie Library's charter, granted in 1903, had also required the city to provide a public library to serve blacks. In early 1904, the city aldermen bought a lot at the corner of Brevard and East 2nd streets for a separate library for blacks. Although only six blocks from the Carnegie Library, it was in the heart of the Brooklyn neighborhood, the black city within the city of Charlotte where all the black churches and most black-owned businesses and professional offices were located.
By February, another plan was taking shape. Thomas S. Franklin, secretary for a Charlotte cotton press manufacturer and a member of the city board of aldermen, heard that industrialist Andrew Carnegie was offering cities and towns money for library construction. On his next business trip to New York, Franklin called on personal friend James Bertram, then secretary of the Carnegie Corp. With his help, arrangements were made for Charlotte to receive a gift of $20,000, later increased to $25,000.