The Berkshire Athenaeum is a public library

Library

In a traditional sense, a library is a large collection of books, and can refer to the place in which the collection is housed. Today, the term can refer to any collection, including digital sources, resources, and services...

 (1872) based on a previously private athenaeum, and now located at 1 Wendell Avenue, Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Pittsfield, Massachusetts

Pittsfield is the largest city and the county seat of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is the principal city of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of Berkshire County. Its area code is 413. Its ZIP code is 01201...

 in the Berkshires

The Berkshires

The Berkshires , is a highland geologic region located in the western parts of Massachusetts and Connecticut.Also referred to as the Berkshire Hills, Berkshire Mountains, and Berkshire Plateau, the region enjoys a vibrant tourism industry based on music, arts, and recreation.-Definition:The term...

, USA. Like many New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

 libraries, the Berkshire Athenaeum started as a private organization.

A private Public Library Association was founded in 1850. The name was later changed to the Berkshire Athenæum. Later still, Thomas F. Plunkett, Calvin Martin and Thomas Allen, were "instrumental in forming it into a free library." "In 1874, by means of a bequest from Phinehas Allen, and the gift of [the 1876] building from Thomas Allen

Thomas Allen (Massachusetts)

Thomas Allen was a railroad builder and later a member of the United States House of Representatives from Missouri....

, the Berkshire Athenaeum was placed upon a firm foundation."

In 1903, the Berkshire Athenaeum assumed the responsibility for the newly created Berkshire Museum

Berkshire Museum

The Berkshire Museum is a museum of natural history, art and ancient civilization that is located in Pittsfield, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States....

, and was both a public library and museum until the museum spun off in 1932. The Berkshire Athenaeum is now Pittsfield's public library and contains a collection of more than 150,000 items. The library's special collections on local history

Local history

Local history is the study of history in a geographically local context and it often concentrates on the local community. It incorporates cultural and social aspects of history...

, genealogy

Genealogy

Genealogy is the study of families and the tracing of their lineages and history. Genealogists use oral traditions, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members...

, local author Herman Melville

Herman Melville

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....

, and other Berkshire authors are some of the best in the northeast.
Designed by New York

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 architect

Architect

An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 William Appleton Potter

William Appleton Potter

William Appleton Potter was an American architect who designed numerous buildings for Princeton University, as well as municipal offices and churches. He served as a Supervising Architect of the Treasury from 1874 to 1877....

, the original Berkshire Athenaeum building was erected in 1874-1876 as a gift from railway magnate and native son Thomas Allen. It is in the High Victorian Gothic

High Victorian Gothic

High Victorian Gothic was an eclectic architectural style and movement during the mid-late 19th century. It is seen by architectural historians as either sub-style of the broader Gothic Revival style, or a separate style unto its own right....

 style, constructed of dark blue limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

 from Great Barrington

Great Barrington, Massachusetts

Great Barrington is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 7,104 at the 2010 census. Both a summer resort and home to Ski Butternut, Great Barrington includes the villages of Van...

, red freestone from Longmeadow

Longmeadow, Massachusetts

As of the census of 2000, there were 15,633 people, 5,734 households, and 4,432 families residing in the town. The population density was . There were 5,879 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the town was 95.42% White, 0.69% African American, 0.05% Native American, 2.90%...

 and red granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

 from Missouri

Missouri

Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...

. The 1876 building became the Berkshire County Registry of Deeds in 1975 when the Berkshire Athenaeum moved to the current library building two doors away.

External links

• Berkshire Athenaeum — Pittsfield's Public Library