Providence Athenaeum (8/7/2026)

Friday, August 7, 2026 (continued)

Finally headed to Providence, RI.

Lunch stop at Caserta's Pizza for our annual dose
of a Wimpy Skippy, a spinach pie stuffed with
black olives, cheese, and pepperoni

A view of the spinach, cheese, and pepperoni

Visited the Providence Athenæum, using our
Tyler Arboretum membership cards

Providence Athenæum (1838, by William Strickland
in Greek Revival style) was established in 1831, then
dissolved and re-established in 1836 with the
collections of two libraries, additionally the Providence
Library Company (est 1753), which were
membership libraries with dues-paying members

An athenæum takes it name from Athena,
the Greek goddess of wisdom, and signifies
 an association for the advancement of learning

The statue is on loan from Wheaton College (Norton, MA)
where the students painted her toenails on special occasions

Card Catalog (1883); in 1895 the collection began
being re-catalogued using the Dewey Decimal System

A card catalog card showing an example of Library Hand,
a special style of handwriting taught in library schools;
Library Hand was developed by Melvil Dewey and
Thomas Edison to provide uniformity and legibility

Paper parasols in the 1914 addition (by Norman Isham)

The Children's Library is in the 1978 addition (by Warren Plattner)

View from the mezzanine, for a look at the busts: Socrates,
Demosthenes, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin,
William Ellery Channing, Louisa May Alcott,
Frederick Douglass, and Sir Walter Scott on the front wall

More busts from the left: Charles Dickens, Mary
Wollstonecraft, John Milton, William Shakespeare,
Dante Alighieri, Petrarch and Homer

The Hours (1801, by Edward Malbone) is
a miniature watercolor on ivory that was
painted as a tableau vivant with people
dressing up like famous scenes; here we have
Amy Dorrance Richmond Taylor as Past,
Mary Hepburn Parsons as Present, and
Anna Richmond as Future

This is how to reach a book on a higher shelf

The three busts are Sir Walter Scott, Edgar Allen Poe,
and Lord Byron; we never figured out what was
behind the windows above Edgar Allen Poe

Downstairs in the Reading Room is a
the largest painting in the Athenæum, a
copy (c 1838, by an unnamed "accomplished
Italian artist) of the so-called Lansdowne
portrait (1786, by RI-born Gilbert Stuart)

A peek into the The Philbrick Rare Book Room,
with the Egyptian-style cabinet (1838-1840, by
Russell Bartlett and Frederick Catherwood) that houses
the Description de l’Égypte, a 25-volume set of books
 documenting Napoleon’s 1798-99 expedition to Egypt

Richmond Fountain (c 1873, by
Ware & Van Brunt in Gothic Revival style)
may have been the first public drinking
fountain in Providence