Boston Athenæum facts for kids

The Boston Athenaeum is a very old and special library in the United States. It's a "membership library," which means people pay a yearly fee to use its amazing collections and services. This historic place was started in 1807 by a group called the Anthology Club in Boston, Massachusetts. You can find it at 10½ Beacon Street on Beacon Hill.

The Boston Athenaeum has a huge collection of books you can borrow. It also has a public art gallery and a special collection of over 100,000 rare books. Its art collection includes 100,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and photos. They also have important research materials, like one of the best collections about the American Civil War. The Athenaeum hosts talks, readings, and concerts too.

Some of its most amazing treasures include a big part of President George Washington's personal library. It also has busts (head and shoulder sculptures) of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Lafayette that once belonged to Thomas Jefferson. You can see a first edition of John James Audubon's famous book, The Birds of America. There's also a 1799 set of Los caprichos by Francisco Goya. The library displays portraits by famous artists like Gilbert Stuart and John Singer Sargent. It even has one of the largest collections of modern artists' books in the U.S.

Many famous writers, thinkers, and politicians have been members of the Boston Athenaeum. These include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, John Quincy Adams, and John F. Kennedy.

History of the Boston Athenaeum

How the Athenaeum Began

The Boston Athenaeum started with a magazine called The Monthly Anthology, or Magazine of Polite Literature. This magazine was created in 1803 by a young Harvard graduate named Phineas Adams. In 1805, the young men who continued the magazine formed a group called the Anthology Society.

William Smith Shaw, the first librarian (around 1807–1823)

The Boston Athenaeum was officially founded in 1807 by members of this Anthology Society. They first planned to have a simple reading room. The first librarian, William Smith Shaw, and the new leaders had big dreams for the Athenaeum. They were inspired by a similar place in Liverpool, England.

Their vision grew to include a library with books on all subjects in many languages. They also wanted a gallery for sculptures and paintings. Even collections of coins and interesting natural items were part of their plan. Over the past 200 years, the Athenaeum has mostly followed this grand idea. Its motto, chosen in 1814, is Literarum fructus dulces. This means "Sweet are the Fruits of Letters."

At first, a yearly membership cost ten dollars. Only members could enter the Athenaeum's rooms, but they could bring guests. The collections were "non-circulating," meaning members could not take books home.

The Boston Athenaeum first rented rooms. In 1809, it bought a small house next to the King's Chapel Burying Ground. Then, in 1822, it moved to a large house on Pearl Street. A lecture hall and art gallery were added there within four years.

In 1823, William Shaw stopped being the librarian. Other important libraries, like the King's Chapel Library, moved their books to the Athenaeum. In 1827, they started creating a detailed catalog for all the books. That same year, the art gallery opened, and its first yearly exhibition began. By 1830, the Athenaeum became a circulating library. This meant members could finally check out books, but only four at a time.

Inside the Athenæum at 10½ Beacon Street, around 1855 (Southworth & Hawes)

Moving to Beacon Street

By the early 1840s, Boston was growing fast. The Pearl Street area became busy with businesses and warehouses. The Athenaeum's leaders decided to build a new home to make it easier for people to visit. They bought land on Beacon Street that overlooked the Old Granary Burying Ground. The first stone for the new building was laid in 1847.

In 1849, the Athenaeum opened its current building at 10½ Beacon Street. This was the first building designed just for the Boston Athenaeum's needs. The first floor held the sculpture gallery. The second floor was for the library. The third floor displayed the paintings.

The architect was Edward Clarke Cabot. His design was chosen because he found a clever way to build an arch over graves in the Granary Burial Ground. This allowed more space on all floors above the basement. The building's style is called neo-Palladian. Its unique "Patterson sandstone" front was, and still is, special in Boston.

New Ways to Organize Books

Charles Ammi Cutter, librarian (around 1869)

Charles Ammi Cutter became the librarian in 1869. Before him, the work on the library's main catalog was slow. The Athenaeum's exhibition area became available when the Museum of Fine Arts moved its collections to its own building. Cutter used this extra space to spread out the collections. He also worked to finish the five-volume catalog.

Cutter created his own system for organizing books, called Expansive Classification. This system later became the basis for the Library of Congress classification system. Even today, the parts of a book's call number that show the author's name are called "Cutter numbers."

Starting the Museum of Fine Arts

Many of the Athenaeum's leaders helped create a separate art museum in Boston. From 1872 to 1876, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts showed its art in the Athenaeum's gallery. This was while their new building was being finished. After the museum moved, the Athenaeum no longer held annual art exhibitions. Instead, shelves were put in, and the library expanded to the first and third floors.

The Athenaeum in Recent Times

From 1913 to 1914, the Boston Athenaeum hired architects Bigelow and Wadsworth to make the building bigger. The fourth and fifth floors were set back so they wouldn't spoil the building's look. This renovation also made the building fireproof and added more space. This included the beautiful fifth-floor reading room and the fourth-floor Trustees’ Room. More shelves were added in a special "drum stack" that went from the basement to the third floor.

The Boston Athenaeum was named a National Historic Landmark in 1966. Between 1999 and 2002, the building had a big renovation. This updated its climate control system, created more space for books, and added new gallery areas on the first floor.

In May 2020, Leah Rosovsky became the new director of the Athenaeum.

The Famous Washington Portraits

The unfinished 1796 Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington. This was one of two portraits that caused a big discussion.

The Athenaeum owned two famous, unfinished portraits of George Washington and Martha Washington. These paintings had been on loan to the Boston Museum of Fine Art since 1876. Eventually, the Athenaeum needed money and asked the Museum to buy them. The Museum said no.

The Athenaeum then agreed to sell the portraits to the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., for $5 million. When this plan became public in April 1979, many people in Boston were upset. The National Portrait Gallery argued that the portraits were important to the nation's history and should be in the Smithsonian.

A group of important Bostonians tried to raise $5 million to keep the portraits in Massachusetts, but they couldn't raise enough money. The Athenaeum refused to lower the $5 million price, saying it was already a good deal. The City of Boston even sued to stop the sale.

In early 1980, the National Portrait Gallery and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts agreed to buy the portraits together. They decided the paintings would spend three years at each institution, switching back and forth.

Famous Members of the Athenaeum

What the Athenaeum Does Today

The Boston Athenaeum's goal is to help everyone who wants to learn. It does this by making its collections and spaces easy to use. This helps inspire thinking, discussion, creativity, and joy.

What the Athenaeum Collects

The Athenaeum currently has over 600,000 books. Its collections are especially strong in the history of Boston and New England, biographies, British and American literature, and fine and decorative arts. The Athenaeum's rare and circulating books, maps, and old papers show its collecting interests. It used to collect everything, but now it focuses on humanities and its large, historic art collection. This art collection includes paintings, sculptures, prints, photos, and decorative arts. Over 260 special funds help the library add more than 3,000 new books each year.

Digital Collections

The Athenaeum has been turning many of its old items into digital copies. It continues to do this to make them easier for researchers, students, members, and scholars to access online.

Here are a few examples of what you can find in their digital library:

• The Henry Schoolcraft Collection of Books in Native American Languages.
• Confederate States of America Imprint Collection, which includes stamps, paper money, and financial papers.
• Art Deco Designs by Cartier.
• Rare bookbindings from George Washington’s own library.
• Alice Mason Civil War Photography.

Since 2013, the Athenaeum has also shared its many lectures online through Vimeo. This allows more people to watch and learn.

Rare Books & Manuscripts

Here are a few examples of the Athenaeum's special collections:

• Parts of the personal libraries of important people like Cardinal Cheverus, Henry Knox, and George Washington.
• The Groome Gypsy Collection, the Danforth Alchemy Collection, and the Merrymount Press Collection.

These collections include many unique items, like old newspapers from the Confederate States of America.

Images for kids

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  Athenæum, Pearl Street

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  Athenæum, Pearl Street

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  Interior, 1855

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  Interior, 1855

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  Boston Athenaeum, Beacon Street, c. 1855

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  Sumner staircase, c. 1880s

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  Statuary gallery, 19th century

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  1905

See also

• List of National Historic Landmarks in Boston
• National Register of Historic Places listings in northern Boston, Massachusetts