For the week of November 11, 2024.
On November 15, 1985, the Government of Canada recognized the Haskell Free Library and Opera House as a national historic site. It was built between 1901 and 1904 on the international boundary between Stanstead, Quebec, and Derby Line, Vermont.
Around the turn of the last century, Martha M. (Stewart) Haskell and her son Colonel Horace Stewart Haskell built the combined public library and concert hall. There was one condition on their gift: the building must serve people living on both sides of the Canada-United States border. Martha was born in Beebe Plain, Quebec, in 1831 and moved to Vermont after her marriage in 1851 to Carlos Freeman Haskell, a merchant from Rock Island. She held dual citizenship and lived in Derby Line until her death in 1906. In the hopes of uniting the neighbouring communities, the site selected for the public library and concert hall straddled the border between Derby Line and Stanstead.
Nate Beach of Georgeville, Quebec, oversaw construction, which took place between October 1901 and June 1904. Local architect James Ball and his partner Gilbert Smith of Boston were responsible for the overall design of the two-storey building. Their building exemplifies the resort and recreational architecture of the Queen Anne Revival style. The combination of brick and stone, the corner tower, the steep roof with its gables and dormers, and the closed porches with balustrades help identify this building as being in the Queen Anne Revival style. The machine-cut mouldings around doors and windows, the archways, and the stained glass panels are typical interior details of the style.
The library is located on the first floor. There is a reading room, circulation desk, and special area just for children. These rooms are modest in design, with no galleries. There is a thick black line across the hardwood floor, under the stacks and circulation desk, which marks the location of the Canada-United States border. However, the building is not as a border crossing and visitors are encouraged to bring personal identification, in case questioned by Canadian or American authorities.
The large opera house is located on the second floor. It has a slanted floor, dressing rooms, and a standard rectangle plan with a horseshoe gallery and proscenium stage, which was typical for opera houses in the 19th century. Most productions staged here came from the United States. The debut performance in June 1904 was a touring show from Boston, which featured the racist tradition of blackface minstrels. The hope was that ticket sales would generate enough income to support the public library.
Over the decades that followed, the Haskell Free Library and Opera House faced competition from the emerging technologies of film, radio, and television, which created new means of mass education and entertainment. However, it survived and continues to play an important role within the social and cultural life of its border communities.
