The Library of Congress Is Not What You Expect
The Library of Congress Is Not What You Expect
The Thomas Jefferson Building on First Street SE. Completed in 1897. Designed to be the intellectual equal of any European palace, and it overshoots the mark. Walking through the front door feels less like entering a library and more like being admitted to a secular cathedral.
The Great Hall: Italian marble, American murals, allegorical figures of Science, Law, Poetry, and Commerce gazing from their perches. But the Main Reading Room is the reason. Access the public gallery from the second floor, looking down through arched windows into an octagonal room 160 feet from floor to dome, ringed with marble columns, researchers at wooden desks in genuine silence. The silence has weight.
173 million items. One of three perfect Gutenberg Bibles. Thomas Jefferson's personal library — 6,487 volumes. The contents of Lincoln's pockets the night he was shot: two pairs of spectacles, a pocket knife, a Confederate five-dollar bill.
In the Great Hall floor, brass inlays of printers' marks from the 15th and 16th centuries — symbols early publishers used to identify their work. Small, flush with the marble, nearly invisible. You're walking on the signatures of the people who made books possible. Free. Go on a weekday morning when the dome turns gold.
