Exterior view of the Wadsworth Building of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT

The Wadsworth Atheneum is comprised of five connected buildings. The first was the Gothic Revival Wadsworth building of 1844, designed by the eminent architects Ithiel Town and Alexander Jackson Davis. It originally housed the art gallery, the Connecticut Historical Society, the Young Men’s Institute (which became the Hartford Public Library), and the Natural History Society. The Watkinson Library of Reference was added to the original building in the 1860s.