📚 Berkshire Athenaeum

The original Berkshire Athenaeum, now known as the Bowes Building, is a nineteenth-century building that still stands on Park Square in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in the Berkshires. Like many New England libraries, the Berkshire Athenaeum started as a private organization. The private Public Library Association was founded in 1850. The group's name was later changed to the Berkshire Athenæum. Later still, Thomas F. Plunkett, Calvin Martin and Thomas Allen, were "instrumental in forming it into a free library".