Snapshots of the Past

Model of Library of Congress Main Reading Room and Dome – Antique Wall Art

Model of Library of Congress Main Reading Room and Dome — historic photograph
Model of Library of Congress Main Reading Room and Dome. Historic photograph from the Library of Congress collection.

(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)

Description

A window into the past: Model of Library of Congress Main Reading Room and Dome, preserved in this historic photograph. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.

Choose the framed print, ready to hang the day it arrives, or the unframed print for a frame of your own. Perfect for a home, office, library or classroom wall, and a gift with a story behind it. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Since 2001, Snapshots of the Past has shipped historic prints to tens of thousands of customers around the world.

Model of Library of Congress Main Reading Room and Dome

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A scale model of the Main Reading Room and its dome, as the record describes, shows the room's design before or during its realization. The Main Reading Room sits beneath the great dome of the Library of Congress's Thomas Jefferson Building, which was constructed in the 1890s and opened in 1897. Architects and builders often used models like this to study a room's proportions, lighting, and relationship to the structure above it, especially in a building of this scale and ornament. The caption card gives no date, so the photograph's exact age is uncertain, but it records a valuable view of how the reading room was imagined and planned.

Medium1 photographic print.
Notes[no date recorded on caption card]
SubjectsThis record contains unverified, old data from caption card. Caption card tracings: DC, Wash.--LC--Interior--MRR; DC, Wash.--LC--Construction; Architecture--Models; Shelf.
SourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Original scan1,294 × 1,536 px · prints to 4 × 5 in at 300 dpi
ReferenceAMZ-SOTP-HPA-134763

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