Many visitors to Washington will stop and read these inscriptions and, being interested in the authorship thereof, will make inquiry concerning it. Research shows that the originals were prepared by Dr. Charles W. Eliot, at that time president of Harvard University, but that some slight changes were made in the text by the late President Wilson to the extent of the alteration of some three or four words. It is this revision that appears on the building.
The material of the exterior of the building is Vermont white granite and is the same as that used in the construction of the Union Station. The general treatment of the main lobby, which is 250 feet in length, is that of a high cella, 30 feet wide and 53 feet high, and surrounded by an order of pilasters in Tavernelle marble. The adjoining vestibules are ornamented by 24 monolithic columns of gray-green granite from New Hampshire. These columns are 2 feet and 4 inches in diameter and 20 feet in height. The floor is of Tennessee marble, laid in patterns of pinks and grays. The main lobby ceiling has an elaborate coffered design inspired from the best period of the Italian Renaissance.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
The gross receipts of the Washington Post Office have increased from $1,792,917 in 1914 to nearly $7,000,000 in 1938.
In order to make postal facilities as easily accessible as possible, there are located throughout the city 31 classified and 41 contract stations.
To properly transport mail from the main office to the various stations, electric-line terminals, steamboat wharves, and aviation fields, and to make collections from the street letter boxes and deliver parcel-post packages, the office operates a fleet of fully 100 Government-owned automobile trucks.
Designed by Graham Anderson, Probst & White and built of white Vermont granite, the addition was completed in 1937 and it doubled the size of the city post office.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
The Library of Congress, the world’s largest and most elaborate building devoted wholly to library uses, occupies two city squares east of and facing the Capitol Grounds, also an addition recently completed.