Subscription Libraries

Benjamin Franklin and fifty members of his Junto club founded this subscription library in 1731, pooling funds to buy books for sh...

One of the oldest independent libraries in the United States, the Athenaeum was founded in 1807 by a group of Boston intellectuals...

Thomas Carlyle founded the London Library in 1841, frustrated by rules that silenced readers at the British Museum. Its miles of o...

Forty three Portuguese immigrants founded this reading society in 1837 to keep their literature alive in Brazil. The neo Gothic li...

Founded in 1747 with a gift from merchant Abraham Redwood to buy books, this is the oldest community library in the United States ...