In 1887 a small group of people from Becket met "to maintain a library, reading room, and to promote education, temperance, morality, good citizenship and the general welfare". The incorporation papers were signed by the secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on March 8, 1888, establishing the Becket Athenaeum, Inc. A board of trustees has governed the Athenaeum since that time.

About this time Miss Blanche Perkins purchased a building used in Becket as a saloon and gave it to the library, "to remove from the community a source of evil and to substitute a fountain of good". However, on November 4, 1927 a tragic flood destroyed a portion of Becket Village and the records of the library from 1888 to 1927 were lost. After this tragedy, Miss Cerelia Snow donated her Pleasant Street home to the library and it remained there until 1965. This building was somewhat isolated from the rest of the town so when the trustees were offered the Becket Grange, formerly the First Congregational Church built in 1849, they hired an architect to redesign the interior so it could be functional as a library. The library remains in this building today and serves the people of both Becket and Washington.