Elder Park Library, set within the grounds of Elder Park, was donated to the people of Govan by Mrs Isabella Elder, née Ure (1828–1905), philanthropist and champion of women’s education, in memory of her shipbuilder husband John Elder, who died in 1869. There are statues of the couple in the park by the sculptors Sir J. E. Boehm (1888) and Archibald Shannan (1906). The Library was designed and built by the renowned architect John James Burnett at the cost of £27,000 and was opened in September 1903 by Andrew Carnegie. Hanging in the Library is an oil painting of another local hero, Jimmy Reid, by the artist Andrew Hay. Reid will forever be associated with Upper Clyde Shipbuilders and the ‘work-in’ campaign he led in 1971–1972. He was considered one of the greatest orators of the time and the ‘New York Times’ described his famous ‘there will be no bevvying’ speech as ‘the greatest speech since President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address’.