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Category: Washington DC

A sepia-toned photograph from around 1900 of a black man wearing a three piece suit with a tie and a starched white collar.

Scott Joplin & the Magical “Maple Leaf Rag”

Posted by: Neely Tucker

Legendary ragtime composer Scott Joplin died in poverty at age 48 in 1917 and left few personal artifacts behind; only three photographs of him are known to exist. The song that made him famous was the spirited "Maple Leaf Rag" in 1899. So 125 years later, when the Library's music staff pulls the two copies of "Maple Leaf Rag" sheet music that Joplin and his music publisher mailed in for copyright registration, it can produce an audible gasp.

Posted in: African American History, Music, National Recording Registry, Performing Arts, Songwriters, Washington DC

A huge white flying saucer style disc, supported by a single column, looms over a blue pool.

Unbuilt America: A Nation of the Imagination

Posted by: Neely Tucker

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.

Posted in: Architecture, LCM, Washington DC

The illuminated Capitol Building, shown from a distance, with a blue-black sky in the background.

Inventing the Capitol Building

Posted by: Neely Tucker

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.

Posted in: African American History, Architecture, Capitol Hill, Civil War, Congress, LCM, Library Work and Employees, Manuscripts, Prints and Photographs Division, Thomas Jefferson, U.S. Presidents, Washington DC

Carla Hayden, at left, hands a crystal trophy to George Saunders, at right.

George Saunders Accepts the Library’s Prize for American Fiction

Posted by: Neely Tucker

Novelist, short-story writer and essayist George Saunders was awarded the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction Saturday evening in one of the final sessions of the 2023 National Book Festival, conferring a lifetime honor on a versatile writer whose most famous book cast one of Washington's most famous residents in a surreal light. Saunders' 2017 novel "Lincoln in the Bardo" took a fantastical look at the visit President Abraham Lincoln paid to his young son's tomb in a Georgetown cemetery one night in 1862.

Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Events, Gazette, Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, Library Work and Employees, National Book Festival, Washington DC, Writers

Head and shoulders sepia-toned photo of Rebecca Pomroy, facing front. She is middle aged, smiling, with white hair coiled into a bun on either side of her head

A Civil War Story: Rebecca Pomroy, Lincoln’s Nurse

Posted by: Neely Tucker

Rebecca Pomeroy, a Civil War nurse, was assigned to the White House in 1862 to help the grieving Lincoln family deal with the loss of their 11-year-old son, Willie, to typhoid fever. The story of her relationship with the Lincoln family is revealed in a collection of her papers, photographs are artifacts that are now preserved at the Library as part of the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs.

Posted in: Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, LCM, Researcher Stories, Washington DC, Women's History

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Len Downie: The Washington Post Papers

Posted by: Neely Tucker

The papers of Leonard Downie Jr., who started as an intern at The Washington Post in the 1960s concluded his career with a 17-year run as executive editor, are now available for researchers in the Library's Manuscript Division. They offer insight on the Post's inner workings on such stories as Watergate, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, the Valerie Plame affair, 9/11, the Unabomber and much more.

Posted in: Manuscripts, New Online, Newspapers, Washington DC