A few weekends ago, the CPA, my sis and I ventured downtown to see the Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress, one my favorite buildings in DC.
A little background history first – the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution (it was built in 1800). It is the largest library in the world with over 138 million items on approximately 650 miles of bookshelves. (Some of you may know it better as the place where Nicholas Cage’s character found the secret presidential book in National Treasure II.) Anyone 16 years and older can read the books there on the premises with a user card.
We didn’t go there to look at the books, though. We wanted to see this:
The Great Hall. It’s absolutely amazing.
Even the floor is gorgeous – the center of the marble floor represents the sun and the signs of the zodiac.
The details in this room and building are breathtaking.
There are beautiful busts and statues that fill the Great Hall such as this bronze bust of George Washington (which is a copy of the work done by French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon).
And this statue, which represents the many American contributions to science such as the telegraph, the telephone and the elevator. Of course I didn’t know that at the time, I just thought it was a cool statue.
After we took a quick look around, we stopped by the main desk near the entrance. User-friendly computer kiosks such as these are placed all around the building.
You can use the touch screen to look up information about each area or section of the building. As you can see in the picture below, this is a screen shot of the Great Hall. Each of the little orange squares represents information about a specific item.
Touch the square, and a new screen appears, giving you detailed information about what you are seeing. On the computer below, we see information about Minerva, which is one of the large mosaics on the third floor. There are more buttons to give you additional information about what each area of the mosaic represents.
While the computer system is amazing and very cool to play with, it is a lot of information to remember. So, when you get to the main desk on the ground floor, be sure to pick up a “passport.”
Simply stick the passport into the machine and it will save whatever information you add to it. It also includes quizzes that you can use to test your knowledge. Take the passport home and use the number on the back while logging into the homepage (myloc.gov) and voila – all of the information you saved is right there at your fingertips. Pretty amazing, isn’t it? We must have spent an hour just playing with the kiosks. It truly brings the experience to life and adds meaning to what you are seeing.
After playing with the passports for a while, we made our way around the rest of the ground floor. We were amazed by the intricate engravings on the walls,
and the mosaic ceilings made completely of half-inch sized tiles.
The attention to detail was astounding.
Leaving the Great Hall, we slowly made our way up one of the grand staircases located on either side of the room.
The second floor is home to two large exhibit rooms. These are used to house various exhibits that come to the Library much the same way exhibits are shown in a museum.
As you can see by the banners, this room housed the Exploring the Early Americas exhibit.
On the other side of the room is this ongoing exhibit called Creating the United States.
It was a magnificent exhibit and unfortunately, I was not able to take pictures past the entrance. But there was one thing that was so spectacular that it took my breath away.
At the end of this exhibit, the room opens up to another, smaller room. Inside is housed the collection of books once owned by Thomas Jefferson, who had the largest personal collection of books in the United States at that time . His collection (originally 6,487 books) was purchased by Congress in 1815 for $23,950. It was this collection that began the Library of Congress and it is these books that are on display today. It was such a beautiful display and an amazing piece of history.
After looking at the books for a while, we left the exhibits and continued our tour of the second floor.
Beautiful paintings adorn the walls,
and grand columns line the hallways.
Even the ceiling is ornate and beautiful.
The round panes mirror the shape of the marble flooring down below.
After looking at the ceiling and the exhibition rooms, we then went to the third floor.
Where we found the larger-than-life mosaic of Minerva, the Roman Goddess of learning and wisdom.
She stands guard to the overhang where you can look down and see the reading room (behind plexiglass of course). You are able to visit the reading room, but you have to get a special pass in advance. Of course no pictures are allowed, but again, if you’ve seen the National Treasure movie, then you know what it looks like.
(Here’s a hallway that we were not allowed to enter but it was just so pretty that I had to get a picture.)
After two and a half hours of wandering around this amazing place, it was time to go. There was still much to see and we could have spent all day, but what can I say, we were hungry.
So we took a few more pictures of the outside of the building,
and then called it a day.
Definitely one of my top five places to visit in DC. If you get a chance, be sure to schedule a few hours to go by and take a look around, you’ll be glad you did.
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