The Nantucket Atheneum (1 India St, Nantucket, MA) is the public library for Nantucket,
Massachusetts. The Greek Athenium was a school in ancient Rome for the study of arts. The
Nantucket Atheneum offers free access to millions of books, films and
music as well as over 1,000 programs for all ages year round. The iconic
building, built in 1846, is located in the heart of downtown and
features art and artifacts important to the island’s maritime history as
the center of whaling. The library also provides a free wifi signal,
computer access on the second floor and an inviting garden.
The Nantucket Atheneum evolved from the Nantucket Mechanics Social
Library and the Colombian Library Society, which were both founded on
the island in the early 1820’s. These two social libraries joined forces
in 1827 to become the Universal Library Association, which moved in
1833 to a renovated Universalist Church at the corner of Federal Street
and Pearl Street. In 1834 the library was incorporated as the Nantucket
Atheneum, a private membership library with eighteen-year-old Maria
Mitchell as its first librarian.
In the spring of 1841 Nantucket banker William C. Coffin traveled to New
Bedford to attend an anti-slavery meeting. There he met a 23 year old
runway slave named Frederick Douglass who briefly spoke to the meeting.
Impressed by the young man’s composure, Coffin invited Douglass to
attend a Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society convention at the Nantucket
Atheneum that summer. Douglass accepted and on August 11, 1841, at the
urging of convention organizers, he rose nervously and addressed the
audience.
It was the first time Douglass had given a formal speech and his
remarks so ignited famed abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison’s passion
that he rose and addressed the audience.
“Have we been listening to a thing, a piece of property, or a man?” he yelled.
The gathering of 500 people shouted back “A man! A man!”
“Shall such a man be held a slave in a Christian land?” Garrison then
asked. “Shall such a man ever be sent back to bondage from the free
soil of old Massachusetts?’
The crowd stood up and shouted “No! No! No!”
After that meeting Garrison invited Douglass to join the
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and travel the country on a lecture
circuit. Douglass spent the rest of his life speaking and writing in
favor of ending slavery and, in time, his fame and influence would
surpass his mentor Garrison.
The Great Fire of 1846 destroyed the
original library building and virtually all of its collections. The
Atheneum was rebuilt on the same site in 1847 and became a free public
library in 1900. A significant renovation of the Atheneum took place in
1996, including the addition of the Weezie Library for Children.