Salem Athenaeum

This private library founded in 1810, began by the merging of two local libraries, the Social Library, founded in 1760, and the Philosophical Library, founded in 1781. For the first four decades, the Athenaeum had no permanent home and occupied quarters at four different locations in Salem. In the 1850's a bequest by Caroline Plummer enable the group to build at 134 Essex St, which was its home until the early 1900's (now the home of the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum.)
The Athenaeum sold the building to the Essex Institute in 1905 and built the current building at 337 Essex Street in 1906. Dedicated in 1907, this red brick structure is modeled in "Homewood" the house in Maryland that Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, built for his son.
The first library in Salem, the Athenaeum was a pooling of resources for the educated who owned books in Salem. Both Nathaniel Bowditch and Nathaniel Hawthorne used this unique library. Some of the older books in the collection came from the spoils of ships captured in the privateering of British ships in the late 1700's.
Presently, the library has approximately 50,000 books, many of them rare, but the library does also provide newly published books as well to its many members. The Athenaeum recently celebrated the 100 year anniversary of their building in March of 2007.

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