Today In History: April 24, 1800

On this day, in 1800, President John Adams approved legislation that appropriated $5,900 to purchase the books that would create the Library of Congress.

(This image isn’t from that time – the building itself was constructed at the end of the 1800s.)

During the War of 1812, the British invaded Washington and wreaked havoc. They burned the 3,000 volumes that made up the Library of Congress (these were housed in the Capitol), ordered from all over the world. Thomas Jefferson, during his time as President (1801 to 1809) took a huge interest in the Library (no surprise there – the guy went into massive lifelong debt because of his book-buying addiction). His own personal library was known as the greatest in the country. When the Library was burned in 1814, Jefferson was no longer President, and was living in retirement at Monticello. I love this story: Jefferson offered to sell Congress his private library (almost 6,500 books, people … damn!) – as a starting point to building up the Library of Congress collection again. The original Library of Congress had a narrow focus: law, economics, and history. With the new books from Jefferson, the national collection had much more breadth and depth: architecture, botany, geography, literature, science. Amazing. The Jefferson collection sat in a reading room in Congress for most of the 19th century, until 1871 when plans were approved to build a separate building for the Library of Congress. Project approved by Congress in 1886, and construction began. At the time, it was the largest (and costliest) library building in the world.

I’m going to DC in a couple of weeks, and I must, of course, make a pilgrimage to the Library of Congress.

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3 Responses to Today In History: April 24, 1800

  1. Ken Summers says:

    When we went to Washington, one of the things we did not see was the LOC. It’s just as well…I might have gone in and not returned for weeks.

  2. Dave J says:

    I spent much of the first half of my senior year as an undergrad doing research for my history thesis at the LOC. It is a truly extraordinary place, and an incomparable resource.

  3. Stevie says:

    DaveJ, I envy you. I visited the LOC only once, but I thought it was the most beautiful building I had ever seen. I spent about three hours looking at the card catalog.

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