by In 1871, Horace Fairbanks presented the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum to the town of St. Johnsbury, Vt. Two years later, he added an Art Gallery to the main building.
This is a beautiful French Second Empire Building. The library has beautiful woodwork, spiral staircases and iron railways, while the art gallery has a very high ceiling capped with a skylight to let in natural light. Entering the building feels like stepping back in time.
Fairbanks was a partner in the Fairbanks Company, which was the manufacturer of the world’s first platform scale, and also the governor of Vermont from 1866 to 1868.
He collected works by American Painters, primarily of the Hudson River School, but also acquired classical paintings while traveling to Europe.
Albert Bierstadt’s ten by fifteen foot painting The Domes of the Yosemite is the centerpiece of the gallery (also the cover photo), dominating the wall directly across from the entry. The permanent collection contains about 100 works.
The Athenaeum was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1996, one of the few libraries in the country with such a designation. It still serves as the town’s public library today.
