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Category: Researcher Stories

A book cover featuring a 19th century head-and-shoulders portrait of a man in a dark suitcoat, turned sideways to face the artist. He has a serious gaze and a long handlebar moustache.

Richard Morris Hunt: Architect of the Gilded Age

Posted by: Neely Tucker

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.

Half length photo of Louis Bayard seated at a desk in the Main Reading Room looking through two 19th century books.

Louis Bayard’s Novel Research at the Library

Posted by: Neely Tucker

Bestselling author Louis Bayard has written nine historical novels over the past two decades and has researched them all at the Library, poring over maps, sorting through personal love letters, consulting societal details of the lost worlds that he brings to life. His latest novel, “The Wildes,” a fictionalized account of Oscar Wilde and his …

Womens History Month: Filling in the (Almost) Lost World of Maggie Thompson

Posted by: Neely Tucker

Margaret Virginia “Maggie” Thompson spent most of her life in tiny Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, more than a century ago. When a Library genealogist came across Thompson's long-lost scrapbook recently, she set out to solve a mystery: Who were the other people pictured in her scrapbook?