The first home of the Paul Revere Pottery, founded in 1908 by librarian Edith Guerrier (1870-1958) and artist Edith Brown (1872- 1932) and funded by philanthropist Helen Osborne Storrow (1864-1944), was in the basement of this building. Reflecting the philosophy of the Arts and Crafts Movement, the pottery provided worthwhile employment for young North End Italian and Jewish women.
The lower floors of the building served as the Library Club House under the supervision of Guerrier where young women formed clubs for reading, storytelling, and dramatics named for the meeting times. Fanny Goldstein (1895-1961), the assistant librarian at the North End branch, edited the newsletter for the Saturday Evening Girls. She went on to become the first Jewish woman to head a branch of the Boston Public Library in the West End, compiled a Judaica bibliography and was curator of the library’s collection. The Saturday Evening Girls continued to meet until 1969. The Pottery moved to Nottingham Hill in Brighton in 1915, operating until 1942.
