The first act of Congress providing for the construction of the
building was approved April 15, 1886. Its terms adopted the plan
submitted by Mr. John L. Smithmeyer; created a commission consisting
of the Secretary of the Interior, the Architect of the Capitol
Extension, and the Librarian of Congress, to have charge of and
carry forward the work; and selected the present site. The year 1886
was occupied in appraising and taking possession of the ground; the
next year in clearing the site, making the principal excavation for
the foundations, and laying the drainage system; and the year 1888
in laying one half of the concrete foundation footings on the plan
adopted by the act above mentioned. On October 2, 1888, a new act
of Congress was approved, repealing so much of the act of April
15, 1886, as provided for a commission and the construction of the
building according to the plan therein specified. This act placed the
work under the sole control and management of the Chief of Engineers
of the Army, Brigadier-General Thomas Lincoln Casey, requiring him to
report direct to Congress annually and to prepare general plans for
the entire construction of the building, subject to the approval of
the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Interior, and within a
total cost of $4,000,000, exclusive of appropriations previously made.
The preparation of the new design was at once entered upon, using
the previous one of Mr. Smithmeyer as a basis by reducing its
dimensions and otherwise considerably modifying it to bring the
cost within the required limit. The new plans were completed and
submitted for approval to the Secretaries on November 23, 1888,
but no action was taken by them. At the same time this design,
together with another modification of the original, retaining the
full dimensions of the building, but modifying its ground-plan and
other architectural features, within and without, in many important
particulars, was placed before Congress. The cost of the building by
the latter design was estimated at $6,003,140, and the time for its
construction at eight years. Toward the close of the session Congress
again took up the subject of plans in connection with the sundry
civil appropriation bill and adopted the larger modified design
by the act approved March 2, 1889, directing that the building be
erected in accordance therewith, and at a total cost not to exceed
$5,500,000, exclusive of appropriations previously made. The amount
of the previous appropriations was $1,000,000, of which a balance
of $745,567.94 remained after the expenses of operations on the old
plan had all been defrayed. Thus the total limit of cost of the new
plan was fixed by law at $6,245,567.94. It may be added that none of
the plans, drawings, or designs made prior to General Casey’s taking
charge of the work were used, all having been new and different.
In the meantime many detailed plans of stonework for the exterior
walls, foundations, etc., had been prepared, and the working up of
the details of design and construction in general had been actively
going on in the drafting room, so that all was in readiness for the
prompt and vigorous commencement of operations, which took place on
the ground as soon as Congress had passed the act of March 2, 1889.
In the execution of the work General Casey had the entire responsible
charge under Congress from October 2, 1888, until his death, on March
25, 1896, and he also disbursed the funds during that period. He
held general supervision, gave general direction to all principal
proceedings, and maintained an intimate knowledge of the work
at all times, while performing the duties of his more absorbing
and important office of Chief of Engineers of the Army at the War
Department, to which he succeeded a few months before he was placed
in charge of the Library building by Congress. General Casey had been
connected with some of the most important pieces of construction ever
undertaken by the Government, including the erection of the State,
War and Navy Building and the completion of the Washington Monument.
The last was an especially difficult task, as it had been necessary
to strengthen the old foundations of the shaft before it was possible
to proceed with the work. In this delicate and hazardous undertaking,
as well as in the erection of the State, War and Navy Building, and
other works, General Casey had been assisted by Mr. Bernard R. Green,
C. E., whom he now appointed to be superintendent and engineer of
the construction of the new Library building, and put in full local
charge of the entire work.
To aid in designing the artistic features of the architecture--that
is, exclusive of arrangement, construction, utility, apparatus, and
the management of the business--Mr. Paul J. Pelz was employed under
the immediate direction of General Casey and Mr. Green. Mr. Pelz
had been in partnership with Mr. Smithmeyer in the production of
the original general plan and design. In this way the design of the
building, as it now appears in the main in the exterior and court
walls, the dome, the approaches to the west front, was evolved, Mr.
Pelz thereby fixing the plan and main proportions of the building.
In the spring of 1892 Mr. Pelz’s connection with the work ceased. At
that time the building had reached but little more than one-half its
height.
In the fall of that year Mr. Edward Pearce Casey, of New York
City, was employed as architect and also as adviser and supervisor
in matters of art. His designs principally include all of the
most important interior architecture and enrichment in relief and
color. Mr. Casey continued as architect until the completion of the
building. On the death of General Casey, in March, 1896, he was
immediately succeeded by Mr. Green, under whose charge the building
was completed, in February, 1897, within the limit of time set by
Congress in 1888, and about $140,000 below the limit of cost--or, in
round numbers, for $6,360,000.
=General Decoration: Mr. Garnsey and Mr. Weinert.=--In addition to
those whose work has been described in the preceding paragraphs,
two other men remain to be mentioned in giving any general account
of the construction of the new building: Mr. Elmer E. Garnsey, who
was in charge, under the general supervision of the architect,
of the conventional color decoration of the interior, and Mr.
Albert Weinert, who, in the same way, was in charge of the stucco
ornamentation. Mr. Weinert was put at the head of a staff of
modellers, who executed on the spot the great variety of relief
arabesque and minor sculpture required in the comprehensive scheme
of stucco ornament adopted by Mr. Casey as a chief factor in the
decoration of the main halls and galleries throughout the building.
For the general color decoration of the building--which extends
into every room in the building, and includes the many elaborate
and beautiful arabesques which decorate the vaulting of the main
halls--Mr. Elmer E. Garnsey, who had been concerned in similar work
at the World’s Fair, the Boston Public Library, and the Carnegie
Library in Pittsburgh, was engaged. A large studio was fitted up
in the building and a staff of designers and fresco-painters was
organized. Mr. Edward J. Holslag was appointed foreman; Mr. William
A. Mackay and Mr. Frederick C. Martin were employed to carry out
on the walls the finer portions of the designs; and Mr. W. Mills
Thompson and Mr. Charles Caffin to make the finished cartoons from
the original sketches for the use of the fresco-painters. The latter
numbered about twenty-five, and the larger portion of them were kept
constantly busy for nearly a year and a half.
=The General Character of the Building.=--Of the splendid and
monumental building itself, it may be stated, before entering upon
a detailed description--and stated, too, with hardly any fear
of contradiction--that it is the most perfectly adapted for the
convenient use and storage of books of any large library in the
world. It is the largest, the costliest, and the safest. It is
absolutely fire-proof, not through any ingenious arrangement or
contrivance, but by the very quality of the materials of which it
is built--granite, brick, marble, iron, steel, and terra-cotta.
Wood floors are used in many of the rooms, but they are merely a
carpet of boards laid upon terra-cotta or brick vaults. It would be
impossible for the Library to burn down; a fire would nowhere have an
opportunity to spread. The great size of the building is perhaps best
appreciated from a statement of the amount of some of the materials
used in it: 409,000 cubic feet of granite, 500,000 enamelled brick,
22,000,000 red brick, 3,800 tons of steel and iron, and 73,000
barrels of cement. The draughting office turned out, during the
eight years that the Library was under construction, 1,600 plans and
drawings. Exclusive of the cellar, the total floor-space is 326,195
square feet, or nearly eight acres; and the whole number of windows
is about 2,165.
As a matter of “library economy,” the arrangement of the building is
of great interest. The problems to be solved were mostly new ones. In
a paper on the Library, read before the American Library Association,
Mr. Green said: “Its design was preceded by few or no good examples
of library architecture, and was therefore the outcome of theory and
deduction rather than the application of established principles.”
This task was not undertaken in any dogmatic way, however; “the
effort was,” as Mr. Green went on to say, “to plan on general rather
than particular principles, and afford the largest latitude for
expansion and re-arrangement in the use of the spaces.”
So far, however, as general interest is concerned, it is the
magnificent series of mural and sculptural decorations with which
the architecture is enriched that has contributed most to give
the Library its notable position among American public buildings.
Although a similarly comprehensive scheme of decoration was carried
out at the World’s Fair in Chicago, and afterwards in the new Public
Library in Boston, the Government itself had never before called
upon a representative number of American painters and sculptors
to help decorate, broadly and thoroughly, one of its great public
monuments. Commissions were here given to nearly fifty sculptors and
painters--all Americans--and their work, as shown throughout the
building, forms the most interesting record possible of the scope and
capabilities of American art.
It may be noted here, also, that, both inside and out, the Library
is, in the main, in the style of the Italian Renaissance--derived,
that is to say, from the architecture of the buildings erected in
Italy during the period (roughly speaking, the fifteenth century
or earlier) when the elements of classic art were revived and
re-combined in a _Renascence_, or _New Birth_, of the long-neglected
models of Greece and Rome.