Handbook of the new Library of Congress

by Unknown

LAW.
BY PAUL W. BARTLETT.

The alcoves are arched and enclose great semi-circular windows filled with stained glass, which furnish the greater part of the light needed for the room. The arches springing from the piers support a heavy circular entablature, immediately above which is the dome, arched in the line of an exact circle and supported upon eight ribs dividing it into eight sections or compartments. The ribs are the essential feature of the dome construction, and continue naturally the line of support of the great piers which are the ultimate support of the whole interior—a fact which is more clearly brought out to the eye by paired consoles or brackets introduced in the entablature between the two and seeming to carry the weight from one to the other.

The surface of the dome is of stucco, attached to a framework of iron and steel filled in with terra cotta, and richly ornamented with coffers and with a very elaborate arabesque of figures in relief. At the top, where the dome prepares to join the lantern, the ribs terminate against a broad circular “collar,” so called, containing a painted decoration by Mr. Edwin Howland Blashfield. Finally comes the lantern, thirty-five feet in height, and pierced by eight windows, recalling the octagonal arrangement with which the construction began. The shallow dome which covers the lantern is ornamented with a second painting by Mr. Blashfield, summing up the idea of his decoration in the collar.

At the risk of some tediousness, perhaps, but thinking that afterwards the connection between the decoration and the architecture would be more clearly understood, the writer has given this general description of the Rotunda, in order that the visitor might immediately see what portion of the whole was essential and what not essential; what was “structural” and vital, in other words, and what not. It will have been observed that we have, on the outside, an octagon supporting a shallow dome, on which rests the lantern. Well within this is an octagonal arrangement of piers carrying a much steeper dome. Alcoves occupy the space between the inner and outer octagons. Between the two domes—the inner shell and the outer—is vacancy. The whole exterior—walls, dome, and lantern—the partitions back of the piers, and the connecting screens: all could be torn away and the inner dome still remain secure on its eight massive piers.

COMMERCE.
BY JOHN FLANAGAN.

The piers are constructed of brick, veneered with marble from Numidia in Africa, curiously mottled and in color a sort of dusky red. The high base on which the pier rests is sheathed with a chocolate brown variety of the familiar close-grained Tennessee marble. The height of the piers, including base and capital, is forty-four feet.

The screens are built solidly of marble from Sienna, Italy, which encloses in its rich black veining almost every variety of yellow, from cream color to dark topaz. Like the piers, the screens are erected upon a Tennessee marble base, in this case, however, very much lower—four feet to the other’s eleven. The arcading of the screens is in two stories, the first of three and the second of seven arches. At the top of each screen the gallery is railed in by a heavy balustrade—still of the same Sienna marble—connected with which are two marble pedestals which bear bronze statues of illustrious men. The screens are alike on every side of the octagon but two, the west and the east—the former the entrance from the Staircase Hall, and the latter affording a way through to the east side of the building. In both instances, therefore, the central arch is accentuated by free standing columns. In the second story of the west screen, also, still another modification has been made in order to allow space for a large clock—the three middle arches giving place to a rich architectural setting ornamented with bronze statuary.

The Alcoves.—The alcoves behind the screens are in two stories, like the arcading, and are intended to contain a collection of the most necessary standard books on all important topics. The entrance from the floor of the Reading Room is through the central arch of the screen. One may pass through doors in the partitions from one alcove to another, on either floor; and by means of a winding staircase inside each of the piers one may go up or down, not only from story to story, but, on the one hand, into the basement below, and, on the other, to the space between the inner and the outer dome above.

Altogether, the alcoves have a capacity, with their present shelving, of 130,000 volumes. The cases are of iron, and similar in a general way to those in the large stacks, to be described later; but they are built against the walls, according to the older method of library arrangement, and with very little attempt to combine them in a real stack system, properly so called. The upper shelves in the lower story are reached from a small iron gallery; in the second story a step-ladder must be used—the only instance in the whole building where a book-shelf cannot be reached by a person standing on the floor.