Client: Boston Athenaeum
Project/product: Casebook

The Boston Athenaeum is one of this city's true treasures. But by the mid 1990s, its facilities were falling behind its reputation. The library was cramped. Its lack of climate controls not only inconvenienced patrons and staff, but risked damage to its priceless collections. Additional space had been purchased, but funds were needed to renovate this new space.

We were hired to write a casebook that would 1) make the case for nearly $20 million in repairs, upgrades, and improvements, and 2) reassure the Athenaeum's patrons that the library they loved would remain unchanged in its (treasured) essentials.

Excerpt:

The building, the collections, the future
As poet and former Athenaeum trustee David McCord once put it, "No other Boston institution has anything like [the Athenaeum's] unique, endearing, and enduring atmosphere. It combines the best elements of the Bodleian, Monticello, the frigate Constitution, a greenhouse, and an old New England sitting room."

The Athenaeum was founded in 1807 by a small group of Boston businessmen, clergymen, and intellectuals. They were inspired, in part, by municipal pride, but they also wanted to provide historical and educational resources for the growing city, and they hoped to achieve these ends by fostering scholarship, literature, science, and the visual arts.

These were our roots: the highest of aspirations—consonant with the aspirations of an emerging nation—and a level-headed sense that there was always room for improvement.

Since those early years, the Athenaeum has relocated twice. In 1849 it moved into its current quarters, in which were allocated a floor each for sculpture, books, and paintings. Gradually, the Athenaeum earned its place at the forefront of Boston's cultural institutions. As a result of its constant and purposeful collecting—made possible by the consistent generosity of its members—the Athenaeum by the middle of the 19th century had become one of the five largest libraries in America.