Let's Head to the Athenaeum! Trivia Quiz

Answer: George Washington

In 1848, a group of Boston Athenaeum members learned that the heirs of Mount Vernon (George Washington's Virginia estate) were planning to sell off a massive set of books that had belonged directly to the late first president. Fearing this irreplaceable historical treasure would be broken up or sold to private collectors overseas, 160 members pooled private subscriptions to purchase roughly 350 volumes, including a personal copy of Thomas Paine's revolutionary pamphlet "Common Sense".

Today, these items are housed together in a dedicated room inside the Beacon Hill library. Many of the books feature his distinctive signature on the title page alongside his official bookplate pasted inside the front covers. The collection gives historians an extraordinary window into what he actually read, spanning works on agriculture, military tactics, law, and political philosophy.

Answer: La Cacharreria

Inside the historic headquarters of the Madrid Athenaeum sits a legendary gathering space officially designated as the Salon de Conversacion, but universally known by its famous nickname of La Cacharreria (which translates roughly to "the junk shop" or "the crockery store"). The name originated in the mid-19th century when the room was located in an earlier, smaller building where members squeezed into a tight, cluttered space that felt like a crowded second hand shop to debate matters.

Despite moving to the current building in 1884, the nickname stuck, and La Cacharreria became an important room in Spain. Writers like Miguel de Unamuno and Manuel Azana regularly held court there, engaging in famous tertulias (literary and political salons) that often ran late into the night. It earned a reputation as a place where political movements were born and literary reputations were made or destroyed.

Answer: Edgar Allan Poe

In late 1848, Edgar Allan Poe travelled to Providence, Rhode Island, to court Sarah Helen Whitman who was a local poet, critic, and spiritualist. The couple spent hours together in the reading alcoves of the Greek Revival-style Providence Athenaeum. During one famous visit, Whitman mentioned how much she admired an anonymous poem titled "Ulalume". Poe then pulled a copy of the "American Whig Review" from the library shelf and revealed that he was the secret author by signing his name in pencil next to the title right there in the library's book. That volume remains in the Athenaeum's special collections.

Their brief, passionate romance came to a halt inside the library just two days before their scheduled Christmas wedding. While sitting together in an Athenaeum alcove, Whitman was handed an anonymous note informing her that Poe had broken his strict pledge of sobriety. Deeply shaken, she immediately called off the marriage and the two poets never saw each other again. Poe died less than a year later.

Answer: Melbourne

In December of 1906, Melbourne's Athenaeum Hall filled with moviegoers for the world premiere of "The Story of the Kelly Gang", directed by Charles Tait. Running roughly an hour long, the silent film dramatically retold the life, exploits, and final capture of Australia's most infamous outlaw, Ned Kelly. Because earlier moving pictures were short novelty reels lasting only a few minutes, this ground=breaking production proved that audiences would sit through a full, sustained narrative.

The premiere was a huge success, turning the Collins Street venue into a premier entertainment destination. The Melbourne Athenaeum continued to play a pioneering role in screen history, hosting one of Australia's first cinema screenings in 1896 and later screening "The Jazz Singer" in 1929 during the arrival of talking pictures. The building remains a vital cultural hub in Australia, housing a historic theater and subscription library.

Answer: The Duke of Wellington

Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington (best known for defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815) was one of the founding members of London's Athenaeum Club. He routinely rode his favorite horses from his home through central London to meet with colleagues and read in the club's famous library. However, as the "Iron Duke" aged into his sixties, swinging his leg over a tall horse on the flat street pavement proved increasingly difficult.

To accommodate this famous member, the Athenaeum Club ordered a pair of raised granite stepping stones to be installed directly on the curb outside the front porch in 1830. The mounting block allowed Wellington to step up to horse height without struggling. Nearly two centuries later, the curbside stones are sitting outside 107 Pall Mall and remain a quiet, overlooked piece of 19th-century history.

Answer: "The Domes of the Yosemite" by Albert Bierstadt

In 1871, Vermont industrialist Horace Fairbanks presented the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum to his hometown as a public library and free cultural center. Two years later, in 1873, he added a dedicated art gallery to the back of the building, making it the oldest unmaintained 19th-century art gallery in the United States still displaying its original collection in its original setting.

The centerpiece of this gallery is Albert Bierstadt's massive landscape "The Domes of the Yosemite", painted in 1867. Fairbanks purchased the gigantic canvas at auction in 1872 for $5,100 (an enormous sum at the time) and had the gallery specially constructed with a custom skylight to bathe the painting in natural overhead light. Visitors can still walk through the quiet, classic book stacks of the library to enter the gallery, where Bierstadt's panorama fills the back wall.

Answer: Manuscripts

Founded in 1560, the Athenaeum Library in Deventer holds the distinction of being the oldest municipal library in the Netherlands. It was initially stocked with preserved collections from local medieval monasteries following the Reformation and officially became an academic research library in 1630.

The crown jewel of its special collections is a vast repository of hand-copied medieval manuscripts and early printed works tied directly to the Devotio Moderna (Modern Devotion), a religious and educational reform movement founded in Deventer by Geert Groote. Because Deventer was a major early hub for Northern European text production, scholars from around the world travel to the library today to examine these fragile, hand-written works that deeply influenced Renaissance thinkers like Erasmus.

Answer: Architectural history

Founded in 1814, the Athenaeum of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania was created as a private subscription library to collect materials on history, literature, and the arts. In 1845, the institution moved into its iconic Italian Renaissance Revival brownstone on Washington Square. Over the following century, as the library evolved, it developed a specialization that set it apart from other historic American athenaeums with the preservation of American architectural heritage.

The Athenaeum of Philadelphia houses an archive containing over 360,000 architectural drawings, 300,000 historic photographs, and the personal papers of hundreds of prominent architects. Scholars, historic preservationists, and restoration experts from around the globe rely on its library stacks and digital archives to study how American cities, homes, and public landmarks were designed and constructed.

Answer: Transatlantic slave trade

In 1797, William Roscoe joined forces with a group of local intellectuals to establish the Liverpool Athenaeum as a private subscription library and newsroom in Liverpool, England. At the time, Liverpool was the preeminent port city of the transatlantic slave trade, and much of the local economy was built on shipping enslaved people across the Atlantic. Despite living in the very epicenter of this industry, Roscoe was a fierce and vocal abolitionist who used his poetry, pamphlets, and political speeches to condemn the trade as a moral failure.

Roscoe envisioned the Liverpool Athenaeum as an intellectual counterweight to the commercial greed of the port, building a world-class collection of classical literature, historic manuscripts, and scientific works within its library. When he was elected to Parliament in 1806, he cast his vote to abolish the slave trade across the British Empire in 1807, a courageous political stance that sparked riots upon his return to Liverpool. Today, the Athenaeum's library of over 60,000 volumes stands as a monument to Roscoe's intellectual legacy and humanitarianism.

Answer: Albert Einstein

Conceived in the late 1920s by astronomer George Ellery Hale and modelled after the grand intellectual clubs of Europe, the Caltech Athenaeum opened in Pasadena in November 1930 as a private gathering space and library for faculty, visiting scholars, and California Institute of Technology trustees. Just two months after its opening, Albert Einstein arrived for the first of three consecutive winter appointments at Caltech (1931, 1932, and 1933), often staying in a suite on the building's top floor.

During his stays at the Athenaeum, Einstein spent his days analyzing cosmological models with Edwin Hubble and debating quantum mechanics in the club's quiet reading rooms. The building's elegant architecture and secluded olive courtyards provided a peaceful refuge for Einstein. Today, the Athenaeum preserves "The Einstein Suite", alongside a library filled with scientific records, photos, and signatures from over 40 Nobel Laureates who have stayed at the institution over the past century.