Description

The two-story granite building was designed in the Greek Revival style, presenting the Athenaeum as a temple for the Greek goddess of wisdom. Strickland literally presented a temple front by the use of Doric columns, which frame steps that lead to a recessed portico. The façade does not make specific reference to any classical model, but instead incorporates the temple front by raising the building on a high granite basement, providing for a "re-experience of Greek architecture."

The original basement plan consisted of three rooms: two to be used by the Franklin Society, and one for the building’s hot-air heating system, pioneered by Strickland in his Second Bank of the United States. The main floor intended to divide the Athenaeum and the Historical Society, but the latter group never occupied the building. The original roof system, later altered with a skylight addition, was ingenuously engineered with notations of girders, rafters, king and queen posts that culminated in a gable peak.