The Huntsville-Madison County Public Library was founded in 1818, when Alabama was still a part of the Mississippi Territory and it is the oldest continuing library in the state.

The Library was first located in the office of attorney John Nelson Spotswood Jones, in the Boardman Building, HMCPL Carnegie Library ~1951which is now a part of Constitution Hall Park. The Library also occupied space in the Green Academy from 1821 until Union soldiers burned the school during the Civil War. For several decades, the Library moved to borrowed spaces multiple times, including the Murray and Smith Bookstore, the Y.M.C.A., the Gordon building, the City Fire Hall, and the Hundley building, until the Carnegie Library was opened on February 29, 1916.