Bordering on Eccentric

From coast to coast, monuments to American-Canadian amity adorn the border: the Peace Arch at the Washington-British Columbia boundary, the International Peace Garden on the North Dakota-Manitoba line, the Peace Bridge by Buffalo, N.Y.

The two countries have long been regarded as good neighbors who share a relationship unique in the world. That such notions ignore countless economic, political, environmental, territorial and even military squabbles over the years is beside the point.

No public institution along the 5,525-mile border better embodies this friendly coexistence, or has more vested in keeping the peace intact, than the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, which straddles the line, with part of the building on American soil, part on Canadian. As such, the Haskell has at least two of almost everything.

Two addresses: 96 Caswell Ave., Derby Line, Vt.; and 1 Church St., Stanstead, Quebec.

Two languages: English and French.

Two telephone numbers: (802) 873-3022 and (819) 876-2020.

Two doorways: Front entry in the United States; back fire exit in Canada.

And two disparate functions: Upstairs is a charming opera house, with its stage in Canada and most of its seats in the United States. Downstairs is a robust community library, with its lobby in Vermont, its book stacks in Quebec and its reading room in both.

That the yellow brick-and-gray granite building is astride the border is no accident. Nearly 100 years ago, Martha Stewart Haskell, with the help of her son, Horace, had it built there in honor of her late husband, Carlos, a prominent local merchant. He had been American; she was Canadian. She had friends on both sides of the border, didn’t want to insult any of them but did want to erect a cultural center to serve both communities. Her plan was that revenue from shows at the opera house would support the library.

She hired an eminent Quebec architect and his Boston partner to design the building, enlisted a Quebec company to construct it largely of materials indigenous to the area, and spent at least $50,000--a huge sum then in a small town--before the place was completed in 1904.

“It was a gesture of friendship, a good deal less symbolic than most such gestures,” Canadian author Marian Botsford Fraser has written. “Also, it was conceived by a person, not a bureaucratic group, and therefore is idiosyncratic to a degree unimaginable by a committee.”

A committee, for instance, might have balked at the smack-on-the-boundary-line construction, even though some private businesses and homeowners did the same in that era, when the border was not as precisely defined, clearly marked or strictly enforced as it is today. A committee probably wouldn’t have gone for the opera house-library combo either. That would have been a shame, because the Haskell may be the only building of its kind in the world.

To enter the 400-seat opera house is to visit an era gone by. Its turn-of-the-century detail is breathtaking: the proscenium arch, the plaster cherubs that ring the balcony, the high pink-and-white ceiling made of pressed tin, the original brass chandelier, the stunning stage scenery, the hand-painted linen curtain that rolls up manually by cord and pulley.

All are in virtually mint condition, partly because the opera house is closed and left unheated in winter, aiding preservation. The curtain is used only twice a year--on opening night in April and for the closing concert in October. The curtain and three sets of scenery, according to local historian Matthew Farfan, are believed to be the only surviving works of Erwin LaMoss, a renowned Boston artist.

The opera house, which will reopen April 28, last season offered about 40 shows, including the Montreal West Operatic Society, the I Musici chamber orchestra of Montreal and the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, as well as local musicians, theater companies and student groups.

Martha Haskell’s idea to fund the library with profits from stage productions never panned out. Most of the $144,000 in annual operating expenses is paid with returns off an endowment left by her. Recent building improvements were made using part of the endowment, so library officials are more aggressively seeking public donations to pay for the operation.

The first thing you notice about the library is that it’s a working civic resource, not a museum. Its shelves tend to be cluttered, bulging with a collection of about 20,000 books, 20% of them in French. The checkout desk is busy. All told, it serves about 2,500 patrons (roughly half Vermonters, 30% English Quebecers and 20% French Quebecois) five days a week, year-round.

Soon you gravitate toward the pleasant, airy reading room, with its stained-glass windows inscribed with the names of Haskell family members, its ornate fireplace and its native birch woodwork.

At some point you focus on the thin black stripe that cuts diagonally across the hardwood floor and demarcates the international boundary, this portion of which was established in 1842 by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty between the United States and Britain, which then ruled what is now Canada. Although a few houses and one private factory in Derby Line and neighboring Rock Island, Quebec, also straddle the line, the Haskell is the only public building in town to do so.

Officially, Ottawa and Washington have declared the building a “no man’s land.” Patrons from surrounding communities are not required to report to customs before or after using it. The Haskell pays taxes to neither country, a stipulation the family required in donating it to the community. It is technically a Vermont nonprofit organization, but a board of trustees (four Americans, three Canadians) oversees its operation. Today the Haskell could not be built where it is because the International Boundary Commission has effectively banned on-the-border construction since 1925.

Its spot on the border is not all bad from a practical perspective, though. Because the Haskell has an oil tank on each side of the line in the basement, it buys heating fuel from the cheapest supplier based on exchange rates and market conditions in both countries. Because it has access to utilities in Vermont and Quebec, it does the same with electricity.

For some townsfolk, there’s a less tangible advantage too. “I can be home and at home in the same place,” says Miriam Klein Hansen, a Haskell librarian who is a Montreal native but has lived in Vermont for 20 years. “That’s the biggest appeal about the building for me.”