The Library of Congress

I finally visited the Library of Congress last Saturday, a visit long overdue. 

The Library of Congress

As a librarian, I wanted to visit the Library of Congress during our first decade in the Washington, D.C. area when we lived here from 1987 to 1996, but somehow I was never able to squeeze that opportunity into a life full of work and family.  Perhaps then I subconsciously worried about dragging two squirming toddlers into these quiet, hallowed halls. 

Yet, this is America's library as the docent who led my tour last Saturday proudly proclaimed.  This is the library that has served our nation's leaders and "furthered the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people" since it was established in 1800.  This is the library that began in 1995 to digitize its collections of books, pamphlets, manuscripts, motion pictures, photographs, sound recordings and more so that the story of our country's rich cultural heritage could be readily accessible online to all.

If I'd known how breathtakingly beautiful the interior of the Library of Congress is, I would have visited it years ago!

Originally, the library was housed in the U.S. Capital, but it moved across the street when the opulent Thomas Jefferson Building was completed in 1897.  This was place to be in D.C. at the turn of the last century, the place where fashionable Washingtonians came to see and be seen.

The Great Hall in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress

Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, holds aloft the torch of learning below the Great Hall's ceiling

One of the corridors surrounding the Great Hall

Cherubs along the south stairway represent, in descending order, the Farmer with a stalk of wheat, the Vintner with his goblet, the Hunter holding a rabbit by its ears and the Mechanic with a cogwheel and pincers

Although President John Adams signed the bill in April 1800 that moved our nation's capital from Philadelphia to the District of Columbia and appropriated $5,000 at the same time for the establishment of a legislative library, the library owes even more of its existence to Thomas Jefferson who became president after Adams. 

Bust of Thomas Jefferson in the Great Hall

"I cannot live without books," wrote Jefferson to Adams in a letter dated June 10, 1815.  Jefferson purchased thousands of books while he served as the American minister to France from 1784-1789 and carted them back home to his library at Monticello.  When the British burned the U.S. Capital in August 1814, destroying the library as well, Jefferson offered to sell his collection of 6,487 books to Congress in 1815 for a price of $23,950 which Congress approved. 

Almost 50 years later, a fire in a faulty chimney flue in the Capital ignited on the morning of Christmas Eve in 1851, destroying two-thirds of the library's 55,000 volumes, including 4,000 books from Jefferson's original collection.   Upon the 200th anniversary of the Library of Congress, Librarian James H. Billington began the quest to replace Jefferson's destroyed volumes with copies gathered from rare book dealers around the world.  Jefferson's collection is now on permanent display on the second floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building. 

Minerva marble mosaic by Elihu Vedder

Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, keeps watch over the library's Great Hall from her vantage point at the top of the stairs leading to the Visitors' Gallery where one may look down into the Main Reading Room of the library. 

Main Reading Room
(photo by Carol McKinney Highsmith)

The Giant Bible of Mainz

On the main floor of the Great Hall are two famous Bibles, one that only a church official could handle; the other published for the masses. The Giant Bible of Mainz is one of the last handwritten illuminated Bibles created before the invention of the printing press. Lessing J. Rosenwald, the son of Sears & Roebuck founder Julius Rosenwald, purchased this Bible in 1951 and gave it to the Library of Congress in 1952 where it has been displayed ever since. 

The Gutenberg Bible

On the opposite side of this alcove is a Gutenberg Bible, one of the three remaining Gutenberg Bibles printed on vellum, a parchment made from animal skins.  The British Library and the Bibliotheque Nationale own the other two copies.  According to the story told by my tour guide, Dr. Otto Vollbehr purchased this copy in 1926 and offered to sell it to the Library of Congress in 1930 for 1.5 million dollars.  Despite the economic hardships of the Great Depression, Congress approved this purchase, in recognition of the impact of the Bible upon the founding of our country. 

I visited the Library on the final day of its "I Love Lucy: An American Legend" exhibit which commemorated the 60th anniversary of the TV show that brought Lucy and Ricky Ricardo and Ethel and Fred Mertz into our collective consciousness. 

"I Love Lucy: An American Legend"
A Library of Congress Exhibition
August 4, 2011 - January 28, 2012

The show's history was told through family scrapbooks complied by Lucille Ball and the Arnaz family, as well as photographs, scripts, printed and manuscript sheet music, and other documents from the Library of Congress.

Because the show pioneered the use of 35 mm film cameras to simultaneously capture the action on the set rather than the early and blurry kinescopes, it was the first television show to be broadcast in reruns when Lucille Ball gave birth to her first child in 1955 and needed the additional time off. 

"I Love Lucy" has since been dubbed in twenty-two languages and shown in eighty countries, causing viewers around the world to fall in love with Lucy.  Certainly, my love for Lucy lured me into visiting the Library of Congress, a trip I wish I'd made years ago!