The Boston Athenaeum is one of the oldest independent libraries in the United States. It is also one of a number of membership libraries, for which patrons pay a yearly subscription fee to use Athenaeum services. The institution was founded in 1807 by the Anthology Club of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

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. It is located at 10 1/2

Beacon Street Beacon Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts and its western suburbs Brookline and Newton. It passes through many of Boston's central and western neighborhoods, including Beacon Hill, Back Bay, Fenway–Kenmore, the Boston U ...

on Beacon Hill. Resources of the Boston Athenaeum include a large circulating book collection; a public gallery; a rare books collection of over 100,000 volumes; an art collection of 100,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, and decorative arts; research collections including one of the world's most important collections of primary materials on the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

; and a public forum offering lectures, readings, concerts, and other events. Special treasures include the largest portion of President George Washington's library from

Mount Vernon Mount Vernon is an American landmark and former plantation of Founding Father, commander of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War, and the first president of the United States George Washington and his wife, Martha. The estate is on ...

; Houdon busts of

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...

, and

Lafayette Lafayette or La Fayette may refer to: People * Lafayette (name), a list of people with the surname Lafayette or La Fayette or the given name Lafayette * House of La Fayette, a French noble family ** Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette (1757� ...

once owned by

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the natio ...

; a first edition copy of Audubon's '' The Birds of America''; a 1799 set of Goya's '' Los caprichos''; portraits by Gilbert Stuart, Chester Harding, and John Singer Sargent; and one of the most extensive collections of contemporary artists' books in the United States. The Boston Athenaeum is also known for the many prominent writers, scholars, and politicians who have been members, including

Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803April 27, 1882), who went by his middle name Waldo, was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champ ...

Nathaniel Hawthorne Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associated with that t ...

, Louisa May Alcott, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.,

John Quincy Adams John Quincy Adams (; July 11, 1767 – February 23, 1848) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, and diarist who served as the sixth president of the United States, from 1825 to 1829. He previously served as the eighth United States ...

, Margaret Fuller,

Francis Parkman Francis Parkman Jr. (September 16, 1823 – November 8, 1893) was an American historian, best known as author of '' The Oregon Trail: Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life'' and his monumental seven-volume '' France and England in North Am ...

Amy Lowell Amy Lawrence Lowell (February 9, 1874 – May 12, 1925) was an American poet of the imagist school, which promoted a return to classical values. She posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. Life Amy Lowell was born on Febru ...

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...

, and Edward M. Kennedy.

History

19th century

In 1803, a young Harvard graduate by the name of Phineas Adams established the magazine ''The Monthly Anthology, or Magazine of Polite Literature''. Adams left the New England area in 1804, having insufficient funds to continue the periodical; however, the printers Munroe and Francis convinced other young men to contribute to and continue the magazine under the new title of '' The Monthly Anthology and Boston Review''. By 1805, these young men founded the Anthology Society. WilliamSShaw BostonAthenaeum1

The Boston Athenaeum was founded in 1807 by members of the Anthology Society, literary individuals who began with a plan to have a reading room. The first librarian, William Smith Shaw, and the new trustees had ambitious plans for the Athenaeum, basing their vision on the Athenæum and Lyceum in Liverpool, England. Their vision was expanded to include a library encompassing books in all subjects in English and foreign languages, a gallery of sculptures and paintings, collections of coins and natural curiosities, and even a laboratory. This ambitious design has developed over the past two hundred years with some changes in focus (e.g., there is no chemistry lab) but remaining true to the ideal expressed in the institution's seal, chosen in 1814: ''Literarum fructus dulces'', meaning "Sweet are the Fruits of Letters." The first yearly subscriptions were sold for ten dollars; only members were allowed to enter the Athenaeum's rooms, although they could bring guests. The Athenaeum's collections were initially non-circulating, meaning that even members could not check out books to take home. At first, the Boston Athenaeum rented rooms, then in 1809 bought a small house adjacent to the

King's Chapel Burying Ground King's Chapel Burying Ground is a historic graveyard on Tremont Street, near its intersection with School Street, in Boston, Massachusetts. Established in 1630, it is the oldest graveyard in the city and is a site on the Freedom Trail. Despi ...

, and in 1822 moved into a mansion on Pearl Street, where a lecture hall and gallery space were added within four years. In 1823, Shaw stepped down as librarian, and the

King's Chapel King's Chapel is an American independent Christian unitarian congregation affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association that is "unitarian Christian in theology, Anglican in worship, and congregational in governance." It is housed ...

Library and the Theological Library belonging to the Boston Association of Ministers were deposited in the Athenaeum. Work was begun on a shelf catalog in 1827. That same year, the art gallery was established, and the first annual exhibition opened. Measures were undertaken in 1830 to turn the collections into a circulating library. Once the Athenaeum became a circulating library, only four books were allowed to be checked out at a time. BostonAtheneum ca1855 bySouthworth Hawes EastmanHouse

BostonAtheneum ca1855 bySouthworth Hawes EastmanHouse

10½ Beacon Street

By the early 1840s,

was a fast-growing city, and Pearl Street was built up commercially, with warehouses crowding around the Athenæum building. The trustees moved to construct a new building in order to facilitate access to the Athenaeum. Land was acquired on

overlooking the Old Granary Burying Ground, and the cornerstone was laid in 1847. In 1849, the current location opened at 10½ Beacon Street. It was the first space designed for the Boston Athenaeum's specific needs. The first floor held the sculpture gallery; the second, the library; and the third, the paintings gallery. The architect was Edward Clarke Cabot, an artist and dilettante whose design was selected because his ingenious arch over graves in the Granary Burial Ground allowed more space on all floors above the basement level. The

neo-Palladian Palladian architecture is a European architectural style derived from the work of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). What is today recognised as Palladian architecture evolved from his concepts of symmetry, perspective ...

façade of "Patterson sandstone" was unique in Boston and remains so today. The Boston Athenaeum included sculptures by John Frazee.

Cutter Expansive Classification

Charles Ammi Cutter became librarian in 1869, succeeding

William Frederick Poole William Frederick Poole (24 December 1821, Salem, Massachusetts – 1 March 1894) was an American bibliographer and librarian. Biography He graduated from Yale University in 1849, where he assisted John Edmands, who was a student at the Brothe ...

. Until this point, work had been uninspired on the comprehensive catalog of the library's holdings. The Athenaeum's exhibition area opened up when the Museum of Fine Arts moved the collections into their own space overlooking Copley Square. Cutter took advantage of the space, using it to spread out the collections and to revise and complete the five-volume catalog. He created his own classification system, known as Expansive Classification, in order to revise and finish the five-volume catalog. Later, the Cutter system became the basis for the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

classification system; the sections of call number used to alphabetically designate authors’ names are still known as "Cutter numbers" in the Library of Congress system.

Establishment of Museum of Fine Arts

Many of the Trustees at the Boston Athenaeum participated in the movement to create a separate museum in Boston. In the years 1872–1876, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts exhibited in the Athenaeum's gallery space while waiting for construction of its building to be complete. There would be no more annual exhibitions; shelves were installed and the library spread to the first and third floors.

20th and 21st centuries

From 1913–1914, the Boston Athenaeum employed the architectural firm of Bigelow and Wadsworth to expand the building. The fourth and fifth floors were set back so as not to disrupt the symmetry of the façade. This renovation fireproofed the building and expanded the space, including the addition of the beautiful fifth floor reading room and the fourth floor Trustees’ Room. At the same time, much-needed shelving was installed in the form of a drum stack — a ten-story Snead stack occupying a semi-circular space from the basement to the third floor. The Boston Athenaeum was declared a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

in 1966. Between 1999 and 2002, the Boston Athenaeum underwent a major renovation to update its climate control system, gain more space for books, and add new gallery space on the first floor. In May 2020, Leah Rosovsky was appointed as Stanford Calderwood Director of the Athenaeum.

Gilbert Stuart portraits

Gilbert Stuart 1796 portrait of Washington

The Athenæum had long owned two famous, unfinished portraits of

George George may refer to: People * George (given name) * George (surname) * George (singer), American-Canadian singer George Nozuka, known by the mononym George * George Washington, First President of the United States * George W. Bush, 43rd Presid ...

and

Martha Washington Martha Dandridge Custis Washington (June 21, 1731 — May 22, 1802) was the wife of George Washington, the first president of the United States. Although the title was not coined until after her death, Martha Washington served as the inaugural ...

. They had been on loan to the

Boston Museum of Fine Art The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

since 1876, but eventually the Athenæum, needing money, asked the Museum to purchase them outright, which the Museum declined to do. The Athenæum then agreed to sell the portraits to the National Portrait Gallery (an arm of the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

in Washington, D.C.) for $5 million; when this agreement became public in April 1979, there was strong public opposition to it in Boston but the National Portrait Gallery argued that the portraits were of national historic value and belonged in the Smithsonian. A campaign by prominent Bostonians to raise $5 million to keep the portraits in Massachusetts fell well short of its goal. The Athenæum refused to lower the $5 million price, which it called a significant discount from the portraits' market value. The City of Boston sued to forestall the sale, naming

Massachusetts Attorney General The Massachusetts Attorney General is an elected constitutionally defined executive officer of the Massachusetts Government. The officeholder is the chief lawyer and law enforcement officer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The officeholder ...

Francis X. Bellotti (whose office the Commonwealth's constitution designates as "custodian of public property") in the suit, and this led to Bellotti to declare that the portraits could not be sold without his permission."Bostonians Are Falling Short in Drive to Keep Art." ''Associated Press.'' November 25, 1979. In early 1980, the National Portrait Gallery and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts agreed to jointly purchase the portraits, which would then spend alternating three-year terms at each institution."Pact on Stuarts Approved By Massachusetts Official." ''Associated Press.'' March 22, 1980; "Stuart Portraits Plan Wins Tentative Approval." ''Washington Post.'' March 24, 1980.

Notable members

Hannah Adams Hannah Adams (October 2, 1755December 15, 1831) was an American author of books on comparative religion and early United States history. She was born in Medfield, Massachusetts and died in Brookline. Adams was the first woman in the U.S. who worke ...

John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Before his presidency, he was a leader of t ...

* Louisa May Alcott * Cyrus Alger * Erastus Brigham Bigelow *

Nathaniel Bowditch Nathaniel Bowditch (March 26, 1773 – March 16, 1838) was an early American mathematician remembered for his work on ocean navigation. He is often credited as the founder of modern maritime navigation; his book '' The New American Practical Navi ...

* Uriah Boyden * Josiah Cooke, Jr. * Charles Ammi Cutter *

* Margaret Fuller * Samuel Griswold Goodrich * Augustus Addison Gould *

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (; August 29, 1809 – October 7, 1894) was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston. Grouped among the fireside poets, he was acclaimed by his peers as one of the best writers of the day. His most fa ...

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (March 8, 1841 – March 6, 1935) was an American jurist and legal scholar who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932.Holmes was Acting Chief Justice of the Un ...

* John Jay Chapman *

John Fitzgerald Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination i ...

* Edward M. Kennedy *

* Paul Moody *

Daniel Treadwell Daniel Treadwell (October 10, 1791 – February 27, 1872) was an American inventor. Amongst his most important inventions are a hemp-spinning machine for the production of cordage, and a method of constructing cannon from wrought iron and steel. ...

Mission statement

The mission of the Boston Athenaeum is to engage all who seek knowledge by making accessible the library's collections and spaces, thereby inspiring reflection, discourse, creative expression, and joy.

Holdings

The Athenaeum's holdings currently include over 600,000 volumes, and the collections' strengths focus on Boston and New England history, biography, British and American literature, as well as fine and decorative arts. The Boston Athenaeum's rare and circulating books, maps and manuscripts reflect the collecting interests of the Library as it has narrowed its focus from encyclopedic in the 19th century to an emphasis on the humanities and its large, historic collection of art includes paintings, sculpture, prints, photographs, and decorative arts. Over 260 book funds, the oldest and largest of which was endowed by John Bromfield, Jr. in 1845, support the addition of more than 3,000 volumes per year to the collection.

Printed Catalogs

In addition to catalogs of special collections such as the catalog of the Washington Collection, the Athenaeum printed the following general-purpose catalogs of books in its collection before creating a card catalog in 1903: * 1810 Catalogue of the books in the Boston Athenaeum. 267 pp. 8° * 1827 Catalogue of books in the Boston Athenaeum : to which are added the by-laws of the institution, and a list of its proprietors and subscribers. 356 pp. 8° * 1830 Catalogue of books added to the Boston Athenaeum since the publication of the catalogue in January 1827. 64 pp. 8° * 1831 Catalogue of tracts, scientific and alphabetical index. 5 v. * 1834 Catalogue of books added to the Boston Athenaeum in 1830–1833. 80 pp. 8° * 1840 Catalogue of books added to the Boston Athenaeum, since the publication of the catalogue in January, 1827. 179 pp. 8° * 1849 Shelf Lists, 1849. * 1863–1868 List of books added to the library of the Boston Athenaeum. 6 v. 8° * 1868–1871 List of books added to the library of the Boston Athenaeum. 17 nos. 8° * 1877–1896 List of additions. Second Series. No. 1–354. September 1, 187 to March 2, 1896. 1472 pp. sm. 4° * 1874 Catalogue of the library of the Boston Athenaeum. 1807–1871. 5 v. 3402 pp. l. 8° The first catalog, that of 1810, was compiled by the Rev. Joseph McKean.

Digital Collections

The Athenaeum has digitized a wide range of its holdings, and continues to do so. The digitized holdings are described on-line and are an effort to make them more accessible to researchers, students, Athenaeum members, and scholars. A few examples from the many collections in the digital library: *

Henry Schoolcraft Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (March 28, 1793 – December 10, 1864) was an American geographer, geologist, and ethnologist, noted for his early studies of Native American cultures, as well as for his 1832 expedition to the source of the Mississippi R ...

Collection of Books in Native American Languages * Confederate States of America Imprint Collection - stamps, paper currency, and financial documents * Art Deco Designs by Cartier * Rare bookbindings from

George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of ...

’s personal library *Alice Mason Civil War Photography, Since 2013, the Athenaeum has made its extensive on-going lecture series available to a wider audience through

Vimeo Vimeo, Inc. () is an American video hosting, sharing, and services platform provider headquartered in New York City. Vimeo focuses on the delivery of high-definition video across a range of devices. Vimeo's business model is through software a ...

, an open video platform.

Rare Books & Manuscripts Collections

A few examples of the special collections:Rare Books & Manuscripts
/ref> * Portions of the personal libraries of Cardinal Cheverus,

Henry Knox Henry Knox (July 25, 1750 – October 25, 1806), a Founding Father of the United States, was a senior general of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, serving as chief of artillery in most of Washington's campaigns. Following the ...

, and

. * The Groome Gypsy Collection, the Danforth Alchemy Collection, and the

Merrymount Press Merrymount Press was a printing press in Boston, Massachusetts, founded by Daniel Berkeley Updike in 1893. He was committed to creating books of superior quality and believed that books could be simply designed, yet beautiful. Upon his death in 1 ...

Collection. The collections include many areas that are not documented elsewhere, e.g, the newspapers from the Confederate States of America Imprint Collection

Image gallery

File:BostonAthenaeum PearlSt 1830.png, Athenæum, Pearl Street File:Athenaeum Bowen PictureOfBoston 1838.png, Athenæum, Pearl Street File:BostonAthenaeum2 BeaconSt 1855.png, Interior, 1855 File:BostonAthenaeum3 BeaconSt 1855.png, Interior, 1855 File:Boston Athenaeum.jpg, Boston Athenaeum, Beacon Street, c. 1855 File:BostonAthenaeum BeaconSt ca1880s.png, Sumner staircase, c. 1880s File:Statuary gallery, Boston Atheneum, by U.S. Stereoscopic Co..jpg, Statuary gallery, 19th century File:BostonAthenaeum1 1905.png, 1905

In popular culture

* In the 1998 film ''A Civil Action'', the Boston Athenaeum is used as a stand-in for the Harvard Club of New York.

References

External links

The Boston Athenaeum website

Flickr
George Washington (The Athenæum Portrait) * https://www.flickr.com/photos/24934245@N00/2065520083/ * https://www.flickr.com/photos/29498542@N05/3118776762/ * https://www.flickr.com/photos/21843970@N00/421678201/ * https://www.flickr.com/photos/solongago/3771609879/ * https://www.flickr.com/photos/lizmuir/4226349943/
Simmons
panel on Athenæum history, 2010 {{DEFAULTSORT:Boston Athenaeum Art museums and galleries in Massachusetts Athenaeum, Boston Athenaeum, Boston Libraries established in 1807 Athenaeum, Boston Athenaeum, Boston Libraries on the National Register of Historic Places in Massachusetts Library buildings completed in 1849 Athenaeum, Boston National Historic Landmarks in Boston Neoclassical architecture in Massachusetts Renaissance Revival architecture in Massachusetts Subscription libraries in the United States 1807 establishments in Massachusetts Rare book libraries in the United States Historic district contributing properties in Massachusetts Museums established in 1807 National Register of Historic Places in Boston Research libraries in the United States