Neilson Hays Library

The Neilson Hays Library is a small, white neoclassical building on Surawong Road defined by a half-round porch and a low, central dome. It was commissioned in nineteen twenty-one by an American physician, Doctor Thomas Heyward Hays, as a memorial to his late wife, Jennie Neilson Hays. Jennie had been a dedicated leader of the Bangkok Ladies' Library Association, an organization founded by thirteen British and American women in eighteen sixty-nine to provide English-language books to the expatriate community.