The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, maps and manuscripts in its collections. Since the earliest days of the Internet, the Library’s primary Web site at www.loc.gov has led the way in making these rich resources and treasures available to the American people.
The Library’s new, personalized site, myLOC.gov, presents many of these items in compelling online exhibitions that reveal our nation’s history, knowledge and creativity through primary sources, engaging activities and materials for teachers and students.
The Great Hall
When its doors opened to the public in 1897, the Library of Congress represented an unparalleled national achievement, the “largest, costliest, and safest” library in the world.Its elaborately decorated interior, embellished by works of art from nearly fifty American painters and sculptors, linked the United States to classical traditions of learning and simultaneously flexed American cultural and technological muscle.
Photography by Carol M. Highsmith
Main Reading Room
Eight giant marble columns each support 10-foot-high allegorical female figures in plaster representing characteristic features of civilized life and thought:Religion, Commerce, History, Art, Philosophy, Poetry, Law and Science.The 16 bronze statues set upon the balustrades of the galleries pay homage to men whose lives symbolized the thought and activity represented by the plaster statues.
Photography by Carol M. Highsmith
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