Carnegie Public Library, 12-14 Main Street, Ayr

The Carnegie Public Library, located at 12-14 Main Street in Ayr, was designed by Campbell Douglas and Morrison in 1893, with some later alterations. This two-storey and basement building features a seven-bay Renaissance Freestyle design, organized in a 1-5-1 grouping. It has distinct architectural elements including ground and first floor cill courses, a dividing corniced string course, an eaves course, a cornice, and a part-balustraded parapet.

On the west entrance elevation, there is a central entrance leading to a recessed five-bay section. This section includes a pilastered and architraved doorpiece topped with a dentilled cornice and a decorative iron keystoned fanlight above a two-leaf timber door. Above this entrance, there is a single window aligned at the first floor. To the left, there are two bipartite windows at the basement level, and to the right, a timber door leads to an infilled window opening. The remaining bays display regular fenestration at both the ground and first floors, with circular flower roundels beneath the aprons of the first-floor windows. Semi-octagonal piers separate the bays at the ground floor, supporting Doric columns that divide the bays at the first floor. The upper arcade features elliptical arches, and inscription panels read 'History', 'Science', 'Poetry', 'Travel', 'Fiction', with 'Carnegie Public Library' inscribed on the parapet above, flanked by balustrades. The advanced bays on the outer left and right contain a two-leaf timber basement opening on the outer right, three single windows at the ground floor, and tripartite windows at the first floor. The keystoned elliptical-arched tympanums read 'Theology' on the left and 'Philosophy' on the right, with flower roundels on either side and a segmental-headed detail on the dies at the outer sections of the parapet.

The library features timber windows, a grey slate roof, wallhead stacks, and circular flues.

Inside, there is a tiled entrance porch, a corniced ceiling, and composite order columns in the entrance lobby and reading rooms. A timber staircase leads to a stained glass stair window made by Stephen Adam & Co of Glasgow.

The library is also surrounded by a stepped boundary wall at the entrance elevation, with ironwork enclosing the basement and iron gates on both the outer right and left sides.