Sarah Josepha Hale was a prominent magazine editor, abolitionist and social activist throughout most of the 19th century, perhaps best known for composing the children's nursery rhyme, "Mary Had a Little Lamb." But her most long-lasting effort was her years-long campaign to get the federal government to designate Thanksgiving as a federal holiday. Her decisive tactic? A letter to President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.
Holidays are often defined by the foods cooked up in the kitchen, although those foods and how they're prepared change over time. Among the Library's collection of more than 40,000 cookbooks are plenty devoted to the craft of preparing those special occasion meals. But what might have been a great Thanksgiving dinner in 1920 certainly looked different than one in 1965, and Christmas foods are always changing. Different cultures have unique traditions for each holiday, making for an ever-evolving American smorgasbord.
Burt Bacharach, one of the most popular songwriters and composers in American history, was awarded the Gershwin Prize in 2012. He wrote or cowrote dozens of pop standards -- "Walk on By," "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head," "The Look of Love," "I Say a Little Prayer," "(They Long to Be) Close to You" -- mostly with lyricist Hal David. He also composed, arranged, conducted the band or orchestras for the recording sessions and recorded his own albums. His songs have been recorded by hundreds of artists around the world. His papers are now at the Library.
The Library has a fascinating collection of architectural drawings going back as far as the 1600s, many of which were never built. They offer a look into what could have been had the stars aligned. A futuristic different Ellis Island, a Gothic Library of Congress and a Lower Manhattan Expressway are just some of the elaborate designs that never came to be, by architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Robert Mills and Paul Rudolph.
Edgar Allan Poe died 175 years ago today, on Oct. 7, 1849. Here, we revisit the first publication of his poetic masterpiece, "The Raven" and the tragic circumstances (his dying young wife) that led to him writing it.
U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón kicked off her "You Are Here: Poetry in the Parks" project at several National Parks around the country this summer, from Cape Cod to California. With installations in the parks, she's hoping to showcase "the ways reading and writing poetry can situate us in the natural world." Her tour continues in October at Florida's Everglades National Park and at Arizona's Saguaro National Park in December.
Richard Morris Hunt was perhaps the most influential American architect of the late 19th century. He went to Paris to study, then returned to spread the Beaux-Arts gospel and give America architecture that matched its ambitions. He designed castles that defined the Gilded Age, such as Breakers and Marble House in Rhode Island, and the Biltmore in North Carolina. The Library preserves his papers and has just published "The Gilded Life of Richard Morris Hunt" in association with Giles Ltd.
For a brief time before the success of “Invisible Man,” Ralph Ellison worked as a freelance photographer. He took portraits for publishers and covered events for newspapers. Even after he became celebrated as a novelist, he still took photography seriously, sometimes collaborating with landmark photographer Gordon Parks. His photographs are preserved at the Library alongside his literary works.
The U.S. Capitol building, the worldwide symbol of American democracy, got its beginnings on a piece of paper on the Caribbean island of Tortola, sketched out by a temperamental doctor in his early 30s. William Thornton's "Tortola Scheme" sketch laid the groundwork for a building that has expanded with the nation, growing from the original bid for a modest 15-room brick building into a complex covering 1.5 million square feet with more than 600 rooms and miles of hallways over a ground area of about 4 acres.
