Cooper's Tour

While I watched Cooper, the misguided Cooper’s Hawk, swoop around the rotunda at the Library of Congress, I wondered about the ethereal mural he was circling (and enjoying?).  I headed to The Library of Congress and made a plethora of discoveries.  First, it is the oldest cultural institution in the country, founded in 1800 by an act of Congress and signed by John Adams.  When the capital city moved from Philly to D.C., the small library was in the Capital building which, discouragingly, was burnt down by the British in 1814.  

The library began again with the purchase of Thomas Jefferson’s library (cookbooks and all) in 1815.  It quickly filled up, especially after the Copyright Law of 1870, and new construction was finally authorized in 1886.  General Thomas Lincoln Casey was in charge of more than 50 American artists who decorated the interior of the monumental space.  This blog is actually named for a quote from a guidebook of the time that boasted: "America is justly proud of this palatial monument … It has been designed and executed entirely by American art and American labor. It is a fitting temple for the great thoughts of generations past, present, and to be."

photo from visitdc.com

To say the building, now called the Thomas Jefferson Building, is elaborately designed would be a enormous understatement.  It is beyond words, with the exception, perhaps, of the word palatial.  I suggest taking the virtual tour at the library website, it is even breathtaking on a computer screen.  The ‘lantern’ rises above the highest part of the dome in the main reading room and is painted with a mural of of a beautiful woman with two cherubs.  The artist, Edwin Howland Blashfield, created a woman at the center of the mural as the representative of “human understanding” and she is “lifting the veil of ignorance and looking forward to intellectual progress.” The cherubs are doing their part as well, one is holding the book of wisdom and knowledge and the other is encourage those below to struggle towards perfection.  Surrounding Ms. Human Understanding are figures representing twelve countries that Blashfield felt made the greatest contributions toward modern civilization.  Blashfield was sought after as a decorative painter in the 1890s and created murals at the Capitol building in St. Paul, MN, the Baltimore court house and the ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria hotel among many others.

The Library of Congress now consists of three buildings.  The original building is now called the Thomas Jefferson Building and is pristine thanks to a massive, twelve year restoration project that began in 1985.  In the LOC Information Bulletin, Barbara Wolanin explains that before additional library spaces were built this exquisite building had been bursting with books and people.  Overcrowding had horrible consequences:  drop ceilings, office partitions, blocked corridors and offices in the Great Hall.  It’s a good thing Cooper wasn’t around to see that.  When the James Madison Building was opened in 1980 the library could spread out, breath and slowly restore the original building and Blashfield’s mural to all it’s gilded glory.  I hope that Cooper’s antics led more people to investigate and visit the Library of Congress, he certainly lifted the veil of ignorance from my eyes.