Library of Congress

Washington
DC

Jefferson’s Library recreated

QUICK FACTS
  • The Library of Congress was established by an act of Congress and signed by President John Adams on 24-Apr-1800.
  • Established with $5,000, the original library was housed in the new Capitol.
  • In August 1814 (during the War of 1812) invading British troops set fire to the Capitol Building and the contents of the small library was burned or pillaged.
  • Within a month, Jefferson offered to replace the libary with his person collection of books. In January 1815, Congress accepted Jefferson’s offer; he was paid $23,950 for his 6,487 books.
  • On 24-Dec-1851 the largest fire in the Library's history destroyed 35,000 books (from a collection of 55,000), including two-thirds of Jefferson's original collection.
  • Today the collection has more than 155 million items in 460 languages.
  • The Thomas Jefferson Building (opening 1897) is the oldest of the three Library of Congress buildings. The others are the John Adams Building (1939) and the James Madison Memorial Building (1976).
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Established in 1800 to serve members of Congress, the collection of some 3,000 books was burned or pillaged by the British in August 1814, during the War of 1812. Within a month, Thomas Jefferson offered to donate his own books as a replacement. The following year, Jefferson sold his entire library of nearly 6,500 volumes, for $23,940, to Congress as the foundation for a new Congressional Library.

In 1851 a fire destroyed much of the Library of Congress collection, including two-thirds of the books from Jefferson's donation 35 years before.

The remaining Jefferson books have been conserved, many have been restored or are under restoration.

Guided and self-guided tours available, including a recreation of Jefferson’s library in the Thomas Jefferson Building.

Associated People

The First Congress faced a unique challenge, and those congressmen and senators who gathered in New York in the spring of 1789 were awed by what lay ahead of them. Not only would members of the Congress have to pass some promised amendments to the new Constitution, but they would have to fill out the bare framework of a government that the Philadelphia Convention had created, including the organization of the executive and judicial departments. Some therefore saw the First Congress as something in the nature of a second constitutional convention.

Gordon S. Wood
Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (2009)