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.

You Go Girl

Mary Titcomb was a rebel rouser.  An innovator that couldn’t leave well enough alone.  She was frustrated by the fact that so many people were going without library books in rural Washington County, Maryland.  The current system shipped boxes of 30 books to 66 local post offices and generals stores, but Mary just wasn’t satisfied.  She came up with a brilliant idea and presented it to the Board of Trustees in 1905.  A bookmobile.  

Actually, it was a library wagon, pulled by two elderly horses, Dandy and Black Beauty, and commandeered by Mr. Thomas, the janitor, and it traveled to homes and communities handing out books like candy.  Can you imagine how exciting it must have been to see the library wagon pulling into town in 1905?  Mrs. Titcomb oversaw the design of the wagon and directed the painter to refrain from “gilt and scrollwork” and make the letters “plain and dignified”, it was a library after all.  It was so reserved that one resident saw it coming and said, “We ain’t got no use for the dead wagon here.”  Mary decided to loosen up a bit and paint the trim red.

In 1910 the beautiful wagon met a violent end when it was demolished by a freight train, all that remained was splinters.  From the ashes a new motorized bookmobile arose in 1912 and continued its work in Washington County.  There are some marvelous pictures and more history of the early bookmobile days at the Western Maryland Regional Library website.

Margaret Binkley Du Vernet remembered going out to homes in the ‘Dodge truck version’ of the Book Wagon, still under the direction of Mrs. Titcomb, and following a route that would take them to each place twice a year.  Twice a year!  Imagine waiting six months for your next book?  I have trouble waiting six hours for a book I want.  Immediately I wondered how many books they could take out at a time.  They were probably so thrilled just to have a book that they were very grateful (not greedy like me!)  Margaret remembered a stop at one derelict home with rags stuck into the broken windows,

“Miss Chrissinger drove up and she tooted the horn. And eventually this woman came down with her brood of children and a wheelbarrow full of books, and she was very eagerly getting new ones, and I realized as I checked in her old ones they were all books of travel, and I often wondered whether Miss Chrissinger had guided her into that as an escape from the miserable existence she seemed to have.”

I was relieved and excited to learn that Washington County still has a bookmobile, the horses are gone but the 32 ft. bus now holds 4,000 books, has four Internet stations, air conditioning, a wheelchair lift and an lighted awning.  Mary would be proud.