THE EXTERIOR OF THE BUILDING.
The site of the Library originally comprised two city blocks, containing seventy houses, with an extent, as has been said, of ten acres. It is bounded by First, East Capitol, Second, and B Streets, and forms a partial continuation of the band of parks which stretches east from the Washington Monument, including the Agricultural Grounds, the Smithsonian Grounds, Armory Square, the Public Gardens, the Botanic Garden, and the Capitol Grounds. The general effect of the grounds enclosing the Library is that of an extension of the Capitol Grounds, the street separating the two, for example, being treated, so far as possible, as a driveway through a park, and both being enclosed by low or “dwarf” walls of the same height and design.
PLAN OF FIRST STORY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
The Library faces exactly west. It is four hundred and seventy feet long (from north to south), and three hundred and forty deep (from west to east). It occupies, exclusive of approaches, three and three-quarters acres.
The general disposition of the building may best be seen by a glance at the ground plan given on the present page. The exterior walls are thus seen to belong to a great rectangle, which encloses a cross dividing the open space within into four courts, each one hundred and fifty feet long by seventy-five or one hundred feet wide. At the intersection of the arms of the cross is an octagon, serving as the main reading room, and conspicuous by reason of its dome and lantern, which, rising well above the walls of the Rectangle, are the first feature of the building to attract the attention of the visitor. The lantern is surmounted by a great blazing torch with a gilded flame—the emblematic Torch of Learning—which marks the centre and apex of the building, a hundred and ninety-five feet above the ground. The dome and the domed roof of the lantern are sheathed with copper, over which, with the exception of the ribs of the dome, left dark to indicate their structural importance, is laid a coating of gold leaf, twenty-three carats fine. The surface covered is so large that one’s first thought is apt to be of the expense. As a matter of fact, however, the total cost—including the gilding for the flame of the torch—was less than $3,800. Since it will require to be renewed much less frequently its use was considerably more economical than painting.
The Façades.—The exterior walls of the Library are constructed wholly of granite, quarried in Concord, New Hampshire. The stone is a close-grained variety, so even and light in tone that when the sun is shining upon it the effect is almost as brilliant as if a white marble had been used. The massive buttresses which support the Octagon at each of its eight corners, and so much of the Octagon wall as is visible from the outside, are also granite, but of a different quality, slightly darker in hue, and coming from quarries in Maryland.
NYMPH AND SEA-HORSE, FROM THE FOUNTAIN.