Library of Congress

The Library of Congress began in 1800 with a few hundred books bought for the use of Congress, and for its first century it was exactly that: a working library for lawmakers, kept inside the Capitol. It became the national library slowly, almost by accident.

Its early life was rough. British troops burned the Capitol in 1814 and the books with it. Thomas Jefferson, retired at Monticello, offered his own library as a replacement, and Congress bought it in 1815. His collection covered far more than law and government, and that breadth set the pattern for everything after. A fire in 1851 destroyed a large share of the collection again, including many of Jefferson's books.

What turned it into a giant was copyright. From 1870 on, anyone registering a copyright in the United States had to send copies to the Library. Books poured in, and so did maps, sheet music, prints and photographs. The rooms in the Capitol were soon overrun, with books stacked on floors.

The answer was a building of its own, and Congress went big. The Library's new home across the street from the Capitol opened in 1897. Now called the Thomas Jefferson Building, it was decorated by dozens of American painters and sculptors, with murals, mosaics, marble and gold leaf in nearly every hall. The Great Hall and the domed Main Reading Room are among the most photographed interiors in Washington.

That flood of copyright deposits is also why the Library holds so many of the pictures that turn up in historic image collections. Studio photographers, printmakers and publishers all sent in their work to protect it, and much of it stayed. When you look at photographs of the building, notice the scale of the reading room. Readers at their desks look tiny under the dome. That was the intended effect. The building was meant to tell visitors that the young country took learning as seriously as any old European capital did.