- Hi, I'm Stephanie Ovoian.

I'm the Head of Research and Library Services here at the Providence Athenaeum.

We are kind of a relic here in Providence.

We're a 19th century library that's operating in the 21st century.

The building has so much charm and so many fun little aspects to it that anytime you turn a corner, you're bound to notice something new.

Here we are at the athenaeum's card catalog.

This was introduced to the library in the 1880s, and a librarian named Grace Leonard was hired in 1895, specifically to introduce the Dewey Decimal System to the library.

So at the time of her hire, we had 56,000 items in the collection, and it took Grace 13 years to finish writing out all of the cards.

If we open up one of these drawers, you can still see Grace's handwritten cards inside.

So here we have one of the gems of the athenaeum's art collection.

This is "The Hours" by Newport-based artist, Edward Malbone.

It was stolen in 1881 by one Providence gentleman, and then another man, who was thought to have been part of Jesse James' gang.

But a detective was on the case, produced a reward poster, and the works came back to the library.

It's lived in this case here ever since.

(door rattles and hisses) All right, so welcome to the Philbrick Rare Book Room.

Out on display on the cabinet today we have the "Description of Egypt."

This set of books was commissioned by Napoleon when he was bringing his troops to Egypt.

He also brought scholars, scientists, and artists to record everything that they were seeing in Egypt, and then they published their findings in this set of books.

It was a real hot-ticket item at the time.

And the books were responsible for paving the way for the birth of modern Egyptology and kicking off the wave of Egyptomania that swept through North America and Europe at the time.

Here we have the volumes of text in these folio-size volumes.

Next, we've got the volumes of plates, which were published in these elephant folio-size volumes.

And then lastly, we have three of these double-elephant folio-size volumes, which contain the largest plates and maps.

And these are the largest books in the athenaeum's collection.

And then just for fun, I've pulled out also the library's smallest book.

This measures just about an inch by three quarters of an inch, and it's an addition of Robert Burns' Kilmarnock, "Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect."

(gentle music) And this is the art room where we honor the legacy of Edgar Allen Poe.

We'll set the scene in the year 1848.

The poet, Sarah Helen Whitman, was a local poet, and by 1848, she was considered one of the best poets in America.

And also in the year 1848, the poet, Edgar Allen Poe, was the talk of literary society.

The two poets began a correspondence, and Poe would come to visit Whitman here in Providence.

The two would come to the athenaeum.

And at one point during their time at the athenaeum, Whitman asked Poe if he knew who wrote a poem called "Ulalume," which had been anonymously published in a periodical called, The American Whig Review."

Poe took our copy of that book off the shelf, opened up to the poem and signed his name in pencil at the bottom of the page, because he had written it.

He had just submitted it anonymously.

We have that book in our collection still today here, and you can see his signature at the bottom of the page right there.

That must have been kind of a smooth move between poets, and Whitman agreed to marry Poe on the condition that he remained sober, 'cause he had a known drinking problem.

At one point during one of their visits at the athenaeum on December 23rd, two days before their Christmas day wedding, someone came in with a note for Whitman, claiming to have seen Poe out drinking that morning and the night before.

She ran back to her home where she fainted on the couch.

Poe begged her to still marry him, and she said while she did still love him, she could no longer marry him.

Poe left Providence.

The two never saw each other again, and then he was dead within a year, so it's a bit of a tragic love story.

But Sarah Helen Whitman lived for almost 30 more years after Poe's death, and she was a firm defender of his reputation.

Here we are in an alcove at the athenaeum, and this is a fun little secret part of the library that we like to tell people about.

Here in the desk, you can see that over the years, lots of visitors have come to the library and left little notes for one another inside the desk drawers, and you can find them throughout the library.

This drawer has a ton.

This one probably has about 50 notes inside.

Other desks have a similar amount, some have fewer.

They're just tucked in everywhere.

So this one's pretty lovely, this illustration in there.

We've got all sorts of notes, little poems, longer letters, so everyone is part of the athenaeum's history.

It doesn't have to be from 1850 or 1838 when we were established, but even just last year or this year, everyone makes a little mark on the library.

- And that's our broadcast this evening.

Thank you for joining us, I'm Pamela Watts.