NYT

Once upon a time, a wealthy widow who was a citizen of two neighbouring countries hired craftsmen to raise a stately, turreted building of gray granite and stained glass windows. Only the finest wood adorned the reading rooms in its library. Cherubs soared over the proscenium arch in its opera house.

But the widow’s most important, and perhaps unusual, request was that the building sit exactly on the nations’ common border. Inside, black tape representing the boundary ran along the hardwood floors, a symbol not of division but of the enduring friendship between the two lands.

Then one day, the leader of the country to the south threatened to annex his neighbour to the north.

The Haskell Free Library and Opera House has straddled the border since 1904, the brainchild of Martha Stewart Haskell, the wealthy widow who chose the location, not only for its symbolism, but also for its equal access to both Canadians and Americans.