Free or discounted entry for members of NARM.
Providence Athenaeum
About this place
The Providence Athenæum is one of the oldest surviving membership libraries in the country. Open for nearly 200 years on Providence’s historic Benefit Street, the library has welcomed illustrious writers, spirited thinkers, and curious community members to engage in reading, conversation, and debate since its founding in 1836. Famous visitors have included Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and HP Lovecraft. The library’s collection contains almost 180,000 items and includes rare and unique treasures such as Poe’s signature in a library book, a pre-Columbus map of the world, a monumental study of Egypt commissioned by Napoleon, a first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass , and one of the most prized natural history books of all time.
If you are a member here
A membership to Providence Athenaeum carries reciprocal admission, so the same card is worth free or discounted entry at other places in this program.
- the full NARM list Art, history and cultural institutions. Not valid within 15 miles of here.
Reciprocal programs are built for travel and most exclude places close to the one where you hold your membership, so this is worth the most when you are away from home. How reciprocal memberships work