Despite containing what many have called “the most beautiful room in the world,” the Library of Congress is known less for its breathtaking splendor than for its vast collections. With over five hundred miles of shelves — enough to stretch from Washington, D.C., to Boston—it easily claims the title of largest library on earth. And yet still it expands, at a rate of over ten thousand items per day.
As an early repository for Thomas Jefferson’s personal collection of books on science and philosophy, the library stood as a symbol of America’s commitment to the dissemination of knowledge. One of the first buildings in Washington to have electric lights, it literally shone like a beacon in the darkness of the New World.
As its name implies, the Library of Congress was established to serve Congress, whose venerated members worked across the street in the Capitol Building. This age-old bond
between library and Capitol had been fortified recently by the construction of a physical connection—a long tunnel beneath Independence Avenue that linked the two buildings.
The library’s great hall shines with the classical grandeur of an opulent European palace. Seventy-five feet overhead, stained-glass skylights glistened between paneled beams adorned with rare “aluminum leaf”—a metal that was considered to be more precious than gold at one time.
Beneath that, a stately course of paired pillars lined the second-floor balcony, accessible by two magnificent curling staircases whose newel posts supported giant bronze female figures raising torches of enlightenment.
In a bizarre attempt to reflect this theme of modern enlightenment and yet stay within the decorative register of Renaissance architecture, the stairway banisters had been carved with cupidlike putti portrayed as modern scientists. An angelic electrician holding a telephone. A cherubic entomologist with a specimen box. One wonders what Bernini would have thought.
There’s the bulletproof display cases that contained the library’s two most valuable books—the Giant Bible of Mainz, handwritten in the 1450s, and America’s copy of the Gutenberg Bible, one of only three perfect vellum copies in the world. Fittingly, the vaulted ceiling overhead bore John
White Alexander’s six-panel painting titled The Evolution of the Book.
The famous reading room was a feast for the senses. A voluminous octagon rose 160 feet at its center, its eight sides finished in chocolate-brown Tennessee marble, cream-colored Siena marble, and apple-red Algerian marble. Because it was lit from eight angles, no shadows fell anywhere, creating the effect that the room itself was glowing.
Some say it’s the most striking room in Washington….
The Library of Congress has miles and miles of bookshelves, most of them underground.
At very the heart of the library’s circulation system. Resembling a small airport baggage distribution center, the circulation room had
numerous conveyor belts that angled off in different directions. Because the Library of Congress was housed in three separate buildings, books requested in the reading room often had to be transported great distances by a system of conveyors through a web of underground tunnels.
Edited by Jimson Jaat Taofik
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