St. Johnsbury Athenaeum: Oldest Unaltered Art Gallery in America
Vermont
In eighteen seventy-one, Horace Fairbanks, governor of Vermont and partner in the family scale company, donated a public library to Saint Johnsbury. Two years later he added an art gallery to house his collection of Hudson River School paintings.
The centerpiece is Albert Bierstadt's The Domes of the Yosemite, a canvas ten feet tall and fifteen feet wide. The skylit gallery was built to house his collection.
The Athenaeum's art gallery is widely described as the oldest unaltered gallery in the United States still in operation. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in nineteen ninety-six, and it is still open to the public.
