It is located at 202 Main Street in downtown Newport, in a Romanesque building constructed in 1899.

Converse Goodhue Goodrich and his wife, Almira, donated money for the construction of a free library.

[4] There are fireplaces fashioned of colored brick, rooms finished in red birch, Georgia pine, cypress, native spruce, Swanton red marble, with furnishings in quartered oak.

Perhaps most noteworthy is the floor-to-ceiling wall of glass cases that house a variety of stuffed animals and natural curiosities.

These include an alligator shot in Florida in the 1900s, an ostrich egg, and a flying squirrel found in Vermont.