Snapshots of the Past

[Library of Congress foundation, 1889: overall view, with men working] – Vintage Print

[Library of Congress foundation, 1889: overall view, with men working] — historic photograph
[Library of Congress foundation, 1889: overall view, with men working]. 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: [Library of Congress foundation, 1889: overall view, with men working], preserved in this historic photograph. The original is held by the Library of Congress, so what you hang is a true record of its time.

Choose the framed print, ready to hang the day it arrives, or the unframed print for a frame of your own. A fine choice for anyone who loves history, and a gift that gets noticed. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Snapshots of the Past, founded in 2001, has served tens of thousands of customers worldwide.

[Library of Congress foundation, 1889: overall view, with men working]

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The foundation work shown here marks the start of the Library of Congress's move out of the Capitol and into a building of its own on Capitol Hill, a project Congress had authorized in 1886. In 1889, crews were still digging and laying the base, and the photograph records the open excavation and the men working within it, with little else yet rising above ground. The building that followed, now called the Thomas Jefferson Building, was not completed until 1897. Pictures like this one are valuable because they document the slow, labor-intensive stage of construction that later views of the finished structure leave out.

Medium1 photographic print.
Notes1889
SubjectsThis record contains unverified, old data from caption card. Caption card tracings: Construction; Washington, D.C.--LC--Constr.; Shelf.
SourceLibrary of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Original scan1,536 × 1,347 px · prints to 5 × 4 in at 300 dpi
ReferenceAMZ-SOTP-HPA-127804

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