At the Brooklyn Athenaeum.

An athenaeum, named for the Greek goddess Athena, was an institution dedicated to learning and culture.  Many cities had athenaeums including Boston, Philadelphia and Glasgow (a complete list may be found here). Brooklyn's version opened in 1853 in a magnificent building at the corner of Clinton and Atlantic Avenues. It was organized by the "young men of Brooklyn," historian Henry Reed Stiles wrote in 1869, and was incorporated as the Brooklyn Athenaeum and Reading Room.

The Athenaeum featured a library and an auditorium in which all kinds of entertainments were offered; however, these entertainments were for moral and intellectual purposes. The dime museum also aimed (in theory, anyway) to combine pleasure and learning, but this was the high culture version of (minus the tigers and Fiji mermaids, of course). One could attend historical lectures, concerts of operatic and instrumental music, read in the library or even buy books at the Athenaeum bookstore. In 1857 a Mr. Fleming was having great success with his Drawing-Room Entertainments entitled "Poetry and Music," which had "Brilliant Audiences - Great Success." But by the 1860s the Athenaeum had competition from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and many other less educational theaters, too.  By 1911 the building was being used as a grocery store, and it was torn down in 1942.

Both pictures of the Athenaeum - the 1922 photo and the ca 1900 postcard - appear courtesy of the Brooklyn Public Library.

Stiles, Henry Reed. A History of the City of Brooklyn, vol. 2 (1869), p. 295.
Mr. Fleming advertisement in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Feb. 5, 1857, p. 5.

[Review of The Victorian Fern Craze by Sarah Whittingham is coming early next week!]