Redwood Library Raises $5M, Reaches Campaign Goal

Redwood Library Raises $5M, Reaches Campaign Goal

The Redwood Library & Athenaeum announces this week that it has reached its endowment campaign goal of $5 million, bringing to a close an effort that began in 2019 but was interrupted by the pandemic and restarted in 2023.  

"The campaign’s success culminates many years of preceding planning involving staff, board, Library members, shareholders and supporters that outlined for the Library’s multiple stakeholders the institution’s future as a multi-disciplinary athenaeum and its needs both physical and financial, as well as to make clear the campaign’s ultimate purpose: to further the financial stability of the Nation’s first purpose-built library," said the Redwood in its announcement. 

“We are grateful to all of the contributors, large and small, local to national, who have helped bring this campaign to a happy close. That said, despite this milestone achievement, the work towards long-term sustainability never ends. We will always need to raise annual operating monies and expand our donor base to fulfill an ambitious vision equal to our times,” affirmed Redwood Executive Director Benedict Leca.

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Now with a total endowment of approximately $17 million to fund the upkeep of its historic buildings, the enrichment, preservation, and promotion of its remarkable collections, and the mounting of its varied programs of lectures, concerts, and exhibitions, the Redwood will continue to strive for ever smaller endowment draws that characterize sustainable institutions.  

“I am thrilled by the overwhelming response from such a caring community, which proves how much the Redwood is valued both in Newport and across New England,” stated Redwood board president Janet Alexander Pell.

The Redwood Library & Athenæum is America’s first purpose-built library (1747), and the oldest continuously operating in its original location. Housed in the earliest public Neoclassic building in the U.S., and containing Rhode Island’s first art gallery (1875), it has functioned for nearly three-hundred years as Newport’s intellectual core, a humanities center and civic learning hub styled after ideals of ancient Athenian culture and philosophy.