DC #2 - Federal Building Tours

Friday, 10/19

Jeff was in charge of arranging our Federal tours. He e-mailed Jimmy Panetta’s office and expressed interest in a variety of tours. And Presto! we were booked for all of them. Then it was Serena’s job to fit the rest of our itinerary around the bits we had no control over. Today we had the Library of Congress in the morning and the Supreme Court in the early afternoon.

The Library of Congress (LoC) is soooooo much more than a library. #1 the building is amazingly beautiful. And, the Library is the largest in the world. The LoC receives 18,000 items for possible inclusion every day and accepts about 12,000. Currently the LoC has about 170 million items in its collection. The majority of the collections are received through the Copyright registration process, as the Library is home to the US Copyright Office. It was Thomas Jefferson who convinced Congress that the scope of the collection should include almost every conceivable topic since it was not possible to predict what topics Congress might need to study in the future. It was also Jefferson’s personal library which provided the books when the initial collection of 3000 books were lost in 1814.

During the war of 1812, the British invaded DC and burned both the Capitol Building (which housed the LoC at the time) and the White House. Jefferson sold his ~6500 books to the government for $24,000 - that’s $300,000+ in today’s dollars.

By now it shouldn’t have surprised us but the LoC had a few special exhibitions going on. They were small and we had time to blast through and still get through security on time next door for our tour of the Supreme Court.

Official Reading Room in this branch of the LoC. Anyone can get a “reader card” and go in. But you don’t pull your own materials. Rather, you inform the Librarian in writing in advance what you need and when the materials have been gathered you will be informed which branch you should go to. There are three branches that have reading rooms and more places that house parts of the collection.

Ceiling of the Atrium

Stairway to the Mezzanine

Mosaic on the ceiling downstairs. Upstairs the mosaics are on the floors. This mosaic represents one of the areas (possibly astronomy) that the LoC has materials for.

Everything that looks like marble is marble (from a variety of places both domestic and foreign).

Every image is representative of something and meant as a reminder to Congress of the purpose of the library.

Upper walls of the reading room

One of the special exhibits was about baseball.

Another was a re-creation of Jefferson’s library collection.

A fire in 1851 destroyed ⅔ (30,000) of the LoC collection including ⅔ of Jefferson’s library. They have been able to replace many of Jefferson’s books but you can see the blanks representing items they have not. What you see in this photo is almost ⅓ of the display; the books are arranged as Jefferson would have had them in his library at Monticello. The LoC stores their books by size (not topic) to efficiently use limited storage.

Library of Congress exterior

It is totally possible to go into the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court building without being on a tour. But to go into the Supreme Courtroom you have to be on the tour. It wasn’t much of a “tour”. We went into the courtroom and sat in the visitor chairs (the public can attend court) and our guide described the features of the room and who sits where. It was over in 30 minutes and no photos allowed. We had lunch in the cafeteria there. The best value way to eat out for lunch in DC is to go into a government building and eat in the cafe there.

Monday, 10/22

We started today with our final tour - Congress. We were on a private tour led by one of Jimmy Panetta’s interns (here for a semester from UC Berkeley). Usually Senators and Representatives tour only their own realm but somehow we got passes to go into both houses. The tour included travelling through the underground tunnels from Jimmy Panetta’s office in the Cannon Building into the basement visitor center of the Capitol Building. There are six office buildings that connect to the Capitol this way.

We didn’t explore the exhibits in the Visitor Center but we were shown around the various public areas before going into the House and Senate. No photos allowed in the House or Senate; in fact, no cameras or electronic devices at all. Congress was not in session today.

The Supreme Court met here in the basement of the Capitol before they got their

own building.

Art on the ceiling of the rotunda. E Pluribus Unum = From Many, One

The original House of Representatives room is now a hall of statues. Each state has two statues. California’s are Ronald Reagan and Junípero Serra. Father Serra may be replaced in the near future by Astronaut Sally Ride (first American woman in space).

When Lincoln served his one term in the House of Representatives. The House has too many members now for them to have desks or even assigned seats.

This statue is not one of the states’ statues.

We can use our passes again any day during the 115th Congress.