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Library of Congress

A library that grew from Jefferson’s books, with a Gutenberg Bible in the Great Hall

Local name: Library of Congress, Thomas Jefferson Building

Collection: Washington, D.C. · USA · Open in OpenStreetMap

The Great Hall of the Jefferson Building
The Great Hall of the Jefferson Building · Diliff, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

The story

Before you is the Thomas Jefferson Building, the oldest building of the Library of Congress. At first the library was housed in the Capitol itself. In 1814 the British burned the Capitol, and with it about three thousand of Congress’s books. Former president Thomas Jefferson then offered to sell his own library. In 1815 Congress bought it: 6,487 volumes, twice as many as had burned. The present collection grew from it. On Christmas Eve, the twenty-fourth of December 1851, another fire in the Capitol destroyed nearly two thirds of those books. The collection kept growing, especially after the copyright law of 1870, and the library needed a building of its own. It was built from 1890 to 1897 to a design by the architects Smithmeyer and Pelz. On the first of November 1897 it opened to the public. Step into the Great Hall: marble, sculpture, painted ceilings. Here two huge Bibles face each other. One is the handwritten Giant Bible of Mainz. The other is the Gutenberg Bible, one of the first books printed in Europe. The Library’s copy is printed on vellum and complete; only a few like it exist. For nearly five centuries it belonged to Benedictine monks in Austria, and in 1930 Congress bought it. On the second floor, Jefferson’s books are on display. He divided knowledge into three parts: Memory, Reason and Imagination.

Visiting

10 First Street SE. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Thursdays until 8:00 p.m.; last entry 30 minutes before closing. Closed Sundays and Mondays. You need a free timed-entry ticket: book on loc.gov up to 30 days ahead; same-day tickets are released at 9:00 a.m. Eastern time. Walkthroughs of the Main Reading Room run Tuesday to Friday, 10:30–11:30 a.m. and 2:00–3:00 p.m., and on Thursdays also 5:00–7:00 p.m. Free passes for the daytime walkthroughs are handed out in the Great Hall.

Photos

The Main Reading Room under the dome
The Main Reading Room under the dome · Carol M. Highsmith, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
The Gutenberg Bible on display
The Gutenberg Bible on display · MC BSU, CC0, Wikimedia Commons

Sources

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