Thomas Jefferson Building
- Architects
- Paul J. Pelz John L. Smithmeyer
- Year
- 1897
- Style
- Beaux-Arts
- City
- Washington, DC
- Collection
- the city beautiful
The Thomas Jefferson Building is the oldest of the Library of Congress's buildings, built between 1890 and 1897 to designs by John L. Smithmeyer and Paul J. Pelz and originally known simply as the Library of Congress Building. It was renamed in 1980 for Thomas Jefferson, whose personal library — purchased by Congress in 1815 — became the core of the collection it houses; by the 1880s that collection, together with the U.S. Copyright Office, had outgrown its space and needed a building of its own.
the building
Jefferson's library as seed collection. In 1815, Congress purchased Thomas Jefferson's personal book collection, and it became the foundation of what the Library of Congress holds today — the reason the building was renamed in his honor in 1980, nearly two centuries after his purchase.
Neighbors on Capitol Hill. The building sits on First Street SE, across from the Capitol, with the Library of Congress's later John Adams Building (built in the 1930s) across Second Street and the James Madison Memorial Building (built in the 1970s) across Independence Avenue to the south.
the style
The building is designed in the Beaux-Arts style, in an elaborately decorative version of Classical Revival architecture.
More on Beaux-Artssignificance
The Thomas Jefferson Building is a National Historic Landmark.
nearby
- Library of Congress
- Supreme Court
- House Office Building (Cannon House Office Building)
- Folger Shakespeare Library
- Hiram W. Johnson House
- The Capitol