Following our tour of the Capital, we proceeded, via underground passageway, to the Library of Congress -- which is located immediately behind the Capital. There is limited access to the research rooms and book collections of the Library, but there are some beautiful common rooms and various exhibit rooms located here. We did not spend much time here, but we enjoyed wandering around the beautiful main hall, and we made it to the observation room above the main reading room.
The central hall of the Library of Congress is a
massive space surrounded by grand staircases leading up to a second level that circles the
ground floor. For the holiday season, there was a huge Christmas tree -- maybe 25 feet tall -- in the center of the main hall. It was decorated with book plates and book marks. It was really nice.
On the second level of the Library, there are two exhibition halls as well as another staircase that leads to an observation room that sits far above the floor of the main reading room. The observation room is constructed almost entirely of 1-2 inch thick glass. We think that was more for sound-proofing than for security. The main reading room below is set up in a circular fashion. The reference desk (circular) is in the center of the room, and it is surrounded by three circular rows of desks. This central core of the room is further surrounded by a series of additional rooms
containing countless book shelves, but these are not the only places where books are housed. In fact, there are at least two other buildings near the Library of Congress where major portions of its collections are housed.
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