Thomas Jefferson Building — library building
NPS/Tom Engberg · Public domain

Thomas Jefferson Building

  • Elevation27 m
  • 2 min read
  • 38.889° N 77.006° W

Interesting facts

  • An underground book tunnel once linked the library to the Capitol, with an electric conveyor carrying volumes at about 180 metres a minute.
  • The dome was meant to stay under about 21 metres tall to avoid rivalling the Capitol, but Casey and Green raised it to roughly 59 metres.
  • The building was needed largely because of the Copyright Law of 1870, which obliged every applicant to send the library two copies of their work.
  • Until 1897 the Library of Congress was housed in a wing of the Capitol itself, which the British had burned in 1814.
  • Jefferson offered to sell his personal library to Congress in September 1814, just one month after the Capitol and its books were burned.
  • Nine busts above the main entrance portray Demosthenes, Emerson, Irving, Goethe, Franklin, Macaulay, Hawthorne, Walter Scott and Dante.
  • At the very centre of the reading-room dome, a female figure for Human Understanding lifts a veil from her face, symbolising the end of ignorance.
  • In Blashfield's dome mural, Islam is credited with physics, Germany with printing, Spain with discovery and America with science.
  • A small suite in the attic serves as the official office of the Poet Laureate of the United States.
  • The Coolidge Auditorium, opened in 1925, has hosted more than 2,000 concerts; its patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge was no relation to President Calvin Coolidge.

Why it is worth it

The oldest of the Library of Congress buildings is also one of the most lavish interiors in the United States — a Gilded Age declaration that a young republic could house its knowledge as grandly as any European court. John L. Smithmeyer and Paul J. Pelz won the design competition in 1873, but years of delay followed; Edward Pearce Casey took over as architect in 1892, with the engineer Bernard Green running the works. Built between 1890 and 1897 in a Beaux-Arts and Classical Revival manner, it opened to the public on 1 November 1897, facing the Capitol across First Street. Originally simply the Library of Congress Building, it was renamed for Thomas Jefferson in 1980 in honour of the president whose own books had once formed the core of the collection.

More than fifty American painters and sculptors worked on the decoration, and the result is overwhelming in the best sense. The Great Hall is a space of marble, gilding and painted vaults; a brass compass is set into its floor, ringed by the signs of the zodiac. At the head of the stairs outside the reading room, Elihu Vedder's mosaic shows Minerva laying aside her helmet and shield, a goddess of war turned patron of learning. Nearby, in a case of its own, lies one of the Library's greatest treasures, a Gutenberg Bible, flanked by murals tracing the history of writing from the cairn to the printing press.

The heart of the building is the circular Main Reading Room under its great dome, whose exterior was originally gilded with 23-carat gold leaf. Eight marble columns carry statues personifying branches of knowledge, and sixteen bronze portrait figures stand along the raised balustrades. High in the dome, Edwin Blashfield's 1896 mural The Evolution of Civilization sets out twelve figures for the cultures he believed had contributed most to human knowledge. Visitors see the room from an enclosed gallery; outside, Roland Hinton Perry's Court of Neptune fountain animates the west front with bronze sea gods, turtles and nymphs. The building has been a National Historic Landmark since 1965.

Getting there

The building stands on First Street SE on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., directly east of the U.S. Capitol. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) is about 5 km away. Capitol South Metro station (Blue, Orange and Silver lines) is a short walk.

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in the United States 228The Most Beautiful 19th-Century Buildings in the United States 5The Most Beautiful 19th-Century Libraries 6The Most Beautiful Libraries in the United States 7The Most Beautiful Libraries 27The Most Beautiful 19th-Century Buildings 28The Most Beautiful Buildings in the United States 34The Most Beautiful Buildings 286

From the encyclopaedia

The Thomas Jefferson Building, also known as the Main Library, is the oldest of the Library of Congress buildings in Washington, D.C. Built between 1890 and 1897, it was initially known as the Library of Congress Building. In 1980, the building was named in honor of Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), a Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and the third U.S. president. In 1815, the purchase of Jefferson's book collection formed a core foundation for the library's collection, and by the 1880s, it was felt that the library, which had grown to include the US Copyright Office, needed its own building.

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