Literary Hall is a mid-19th-century brick library, building and museum located in Romney, a city in the U.S. state of West Virginia.

During the war, the contents of the society's library were plundered by Union Army forces, and many of its 3,000 volumes were either scattered or destroyed.

From that point to 1973 the building was used as a meeting space by the Clinton Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons and the Order of the Eastern Star.

[25][26][27] The Romney Literary Society commenced a movement to establish an institution for "the higher education of the youth of the community".

[24][27][28] As a result of this initiative, the teaching of the classics was introduced into the curriculum of Romney Academy in 1820, thus making the institution the first school of higher education in the Eastern Panhandle.

[32][33][35] Following the reorganization, the society built Literary Hall between 1869 and 1870 while also undertaking an initiative to bring the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind to its old Romney Classical Institute campus.

[36][38][39] The Clinton Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons was the second organization to utilize Literary Hall as a meeting place.

The library had been established on April 11, 1935, as a project by the American Legion Auxiliary, and was housed in a room of the courthouse basement where it was staffed by volunteers and open from 2pm to 4pm on Saturday afternoons.

Later that month, on January 29, a charter was issued by West Virginia Secretary of State William Smith O'Brien for the creation of the non-profit Hampshire County Library Association.

[47][48][49] Following its incorporation, the library was relocated from Literary Hall to two rear adjoining rooms on the second story of the Hampshire County Courthouse.

[52] According to architectural historian Michael J. Pauley of the West Virginia Department of Culture and History's Historic Preservation Unit, Literary Hall's unique structural features make the building "one of Romney's and Hampshire County's most notable landmarks, and one in which this community is justifiably proud".

[51] Pauley further averred that the building is "highly representative of the development of education and literature in the early United States".

[53] Literary Hall is a two-story red brick structure, rectangular in plan, and topped with a gable roof.

[51] The windows are symmetrically placed within recessed brick panels that are defined at the first and second stories of the building with elementary brick ribs, or pseudo-pilasters, that form the outer surface of the building's exterior walls and provide separation of the three bays of the main façade and the five bays of the west and east elevations.

[51] The main façade is topped by a simple wooden raking cornice that surmounts an ornamental corbel brick pendant.

[54] Each of the main façade's first- and second-story windows and the entrance are adorned with white wooden label moldings.

A rectangular transom light of four vertical glass panels tops the main entryway's double wooden doors.

[51] Literary Hall is flanked by two interior side chimneys, between the second and third bays of the west and east elevations of the building.