Word: athenaeums
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...well-bred Boston Athenaeum marks its 175th year...
...began in 1807 as a reading room for Boston merchants who wanted to keep up with American and European literature and periodicals. In a city that considered itself to be the Athens of America, the Boston Athenaeum soon became a privately supported repository of culture, buying the best books published in the U.S. and Europe and collecting works of art as well. The imposing sandstone building at 10½ Beacon Street, designed by Edward Clarke Cabot in 1846, provided sunny halls where Brahmins could read (or snooze) and scholars could work. The Athenaeum's roster of readers over...
Last week the Boston Athenaeum, just down Beacon Hill from the gold-domed statehouse, celebrated its 175th anniversary. Trustees today include descendants of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Yet for all its Oriental carpets, marble busts and Victorian antiques, the Athenaeum is no stuffy club of Yankee bluebloods. The trustees include four women, as well as an Irish American Roman Catholic monsignor, and the library's magnificent collection of 750,000 volumes is available to the scholars of the world. One of the finest independent libraries in the country, the Boston Athenaeum truly lives up to its entrance plaque...
...cooled by one or several levels of spacious front porches. Spaciousness was an easeful 19th century preoccupation, at least among the prosperous middle-class citizens who could afford to come here (by lake steamer in those days) and enjoy the broad verandas and 20-ft. ceilings of the Hotel Athenaeum, a splendid old yellow-and-green ark that did and still does offer two desserts with each meal. And it was a spaciousness of mind that made a summer of music, lectures and dramatic readings seem exciting, an attitude that the modern Chautauqua tries with fair success to preserve...
...that decorate restaurants, offices and waiting rooms with ballpoint sincerity. Those bones are less signs of inner life than mementos of the cult of personality. What may be the country's first formal display of autographed pictures of famous folks is now on view at the venerable Boston Athenaeum in an exhibition titled "This Is My Favorite Photograph of Myself." The surprising result: a vibrant, affectionate show offering a smorgasbord of speculation for viewers, with hardly a glossy in sight...