Helen Day Montanari

In the 1940s, Montanari and her partner, Dr. Marguerite Lichtenthaeler (1887–1974), ran an "Aryans-only" inn, the Attic & Barn, in Stowe. For nearly two decades, brochures offering lodging options for visitors to Stowe included those which excluded people of Jewish faith.^[3][4][5]

Montanari and Lichtenthaeler, who shared intellectual interests, loved to travel, and shared a concern for the quality of life in Stowe, left a $40,000 trust to establish an art center and a library in the town. The Helen Day Memorial Library was founded in 1981,^[6] in a building formerly used as Stowe Village School from 1863.^[7] Years later, there was a successful campaign to raise the remainder of the money that was needed for the Stowe Free Library and the Helen Day Art Center.^[8][9]

Day married Carlo Montanari, a Harvard graduate and member of the Italian Army,^[2] on April 20, 1904, the ceremony taking place in Eliot Congregational Church in Eliot, Maine,^[1] although another source states it took place in Newton, Massachusetts.^[10] They had two children: a son and another Harvard graduate, Franco Vittorio,^[11][12] and daughter, Emma Maria.^[2]

In 1938, Montanari was a member of the Appalachian Mountain Club in Boston.^[13]

Montanari died in 1955, aged 72 or 73.^[14]