Library of Congress's Blog, page 112

Our Founding Uncle, Thaddeus K.

This is a guest post by Jennifer Gavin, senior public affairs specialist in the Library’s Office of Communications.

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An engraving of Thaddeus Kosciuszko from the 1820s.

We hear a lot about our “Founding Fathers,” who started a fight with their overlords, then went on to win it. But in that war of rebellion, there were also many brothers (and sisters), cousins and uncles-in-arms—many of them from farther away than the ancestral home of most of our founding crew, England.

One thinks of the Marquis de Lafayette, from France. But there was another founding figure who brought his skills, fervor and bravery to the cause: Thaddeus Kosciuszko of Poland, whom Thomas Jefferson called “as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known.”

This year marks the 200th anniversary of Kosciuszko’s death. In April, the Library of Congress hosted a seminar and one-day exhibition about the life of Kosciuszko, sponsored by the Embassy of the Republic of Poland, the Library and the Congressional Poland Caucus, co-chaired by U.S. Reps. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio and Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania (his mother was of Polish descent).

Kosciuszko, who arrived in the U.S. at age 30 in 1776, was a not-so-well-heeled noble from a part of Poland that has also been part of Belarus and Lithuania, through history. He trained for military service and graduated from his nation’s military academy, but left for France after his brother supported an uprising against the Polish king. There, he studied art, architecture and military topics and was exposed to the French Enlightenment.

No Fair in Love? OK, Then: War!

Back home, he couldn’t afford a commission into the military and worked tutoring students; he tried to elope with his employer’s daughter, but was stopped.

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A September 9, 1779, letter from George Washington to Kosciuszko.

His heartbreak would be second only to England’s, within a few years. His appearance in the brand-new United States would add a decisive skillset to the revolutionary victory. Upon his arrival, he was assigned to the Continental Army, where he was a one-man Corps of Engineers.

Col. Kosciuszko is credited with preventing the destruction of Maj. Gen. Philip Schuyler’s army as it fled the Siege of Fort Ticonderoga, buying crucial time by deploying defenses on the fly (blocking roads, wrecking bridges, stone-damming rivers to bog up adjacent lands). He later placed fortifications near Saratoga that allowed the Americans to defeat the British there in 1777, and he also conceived the famous fortifications around West Point.

Kosciuszko in 1780 was sent south to join the armies there, where his floating troop vehicles saved the day in the “Race to the Dan” River; he was wounded by a bayonet in the Second Battle of Camden. And he helped stage some of the nation’s earliest fireworks celebrations, when the war was won. His brilliance and bravery ultimately won him the rank of brigadier general.

His later life saw a return to Russian-occupied Poland, where he helped lead an unsuccessful uprising and was imprisoned and later released; and his return to the U.S., where he lived in Philadelphia (his house is now a National Park Service site) and became close friends with Thomas Jefferson and a proto-abolitionist. But eventually—concerned about his family and the U.S. Alien and Sedition Acts—he returned to Europe, where he ultimately settled in Switzerland. He died there in 1817; his body was later moved home to Poland, to the castle cathedral gravesite of its national heroes.

A Will, But No Way

Kosciuszko, before leaving the U.S., in 1798 wrote a will that is famous among African-Americans but less well-known to most other Americans. In it, he asked Thomas Jefferson to be his executor and, upon Kosciuszko’s death, to use Kosciuszko’s U.S. assets to buy numerous slaves out of their servitude, provide for their education and purchase land for them to farm. Ultimately, these wishes were not carried out, although at least some of the assets eventually funded a school for African-Americans in New Jersey. Jefferson, citing his age (77) when Kosciuszko died, asked an abolitionist friend to be the executor, but the friend declined; three other wills later written by Kosciuszko also clouded the issue. The will ultimately was resolved in 1856 after three trips to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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An April 2, 1802, letter from Thomas Jefferson to Kosciuszko.

Civil War Diary: “This Hell-Upon-Earth of a Prison”

This is a guest post by Michelle Krowl, a historian in the Manuscript Division, about the experience of Samuel J. Gibson, a Union soldier who was incarcerated in the Confederate military prison in Andersonville, Georgia. He arrived on May 3, 1864—153 years ago today—and his diary is now available online .

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Entries Samuel J. Gibson wrote in his diary from August 7 through 12, 1864, while he was being held in Andersonville Prison.

“I don’t know for whom I am keeping this Diary,” Corporal Samuel J. Gibson (1833–78) wrote on August 12, 1864. “I still have hope that I will yet outlive this misfortune of being a prisoner but I am not made of iron.” A veteran of Company B, 103rd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, Gibson penned these lines while a prisoner at Camp Sumter in Georgia, a Confederate-run prisoner-of-war camp better known by its geographic place name, Andersonville.

Until mid-April 1864, Gibson primarily recorded the weather, his daily routine and observations of camp life in Plymouth, North Carolina. He had decided on January 5 not to re-enlist when his term of service ended and was counting the months until he returned home. On April 18, however, his regiment encountered Confederate forces, and “after a night of terror” the enemy surrounded them. After “a most terrific street fight” on the morning of April 20, Gibson became a prisoner of war and arrived at the military prison in Andersonville, Georgia, on May 3.

On June 12, 1864, Gibson penned a letter to his wife, Rachel, in Pennsylvania. He assured her that while his condition at Andersonville was “by no means a desirable one,” it “might be a great deal worse.(?)” He and his comrades were “in tolerably good health” but suffered “a good deal from the hot weather.” “Give yourself no uneasiness concerning me,” he wrote to allay his wife’s fears. “I can live where any other man can.”

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Gibson’s letter to his wife, dated June 12, 1864.

The reality of Gibson’s life at Andersonville was quite different, however. Overcrowding and lack of adequate food, water, shelter, sanitation and medical care made conditions at Andersonville among the worst experienced by prisoners of war on either side and contributed to high mortality rates among the prisoners. On June 9, just three days prior to writing his wife, Gibson stated more pointedly in his diary, “Still in this Hell-upon-earth of a Prison, our condition is daily growing more disagreeable as the weather grows warmer, three out of four of my mess, are sick.” On June 28, Gibson concluded, “If this is not Hell itself, it must be pandemonium; which is only Hell Gate. Heaven forbid I should ever see a worse place.” Gibson recorded the passing of comrades in his diary, sometimes adding bitter recriminations against those responsible for the conditions that led to prisoner deaths.

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Gibson wrote about the death of a fellow soldier, John Foster, on August 27, 1864.

News still reached prisoners in Andersonville, and Gibson turned his attention to political issues in his diary. He noted on August 29 that the Democratic Party held its presidential nominating convention in Chicago and speculated on the contrast between “their pomp & condition and the condition of the unfortunate inmates of this miserable prison.” On election day on November 8, Gibson recorded that Abraham Lincoln carried a three-to-one margin of victory in an informal election in camp, although he did not specify the candidate for whom he voted.

He left no doubt of his feelings about emancipation, however, and the termination of prisoner exchanges after the Confederates refused to exchange African-American Union prisoners on equal terms. “I hardly know which to despise most, the cruelty & perfidity of the so called Rebel government; or the Miserable Abolition Policy of the gov. of the, U.S. which is causing 50000 freemen to languish & die in Southern jails & Prisons,” he exclaimed on October 16. He continued this thought the following day. “I always regarded Slavery as a great evil; but Abolitionism, as a far greater evil.” Significantly, the words “Abolition” and “Abolitionism” are both crossed out in these entries, and “war” substituted for “Abolitionism.” Whether Gibson altered the diary at the time or when passions had cooled later is not known.

Gibson’s diary also served the vital function of marking time. “Shut up in Prison I am often indebted to this little book, to know how time flies. How else could it be?” he remarked on August 7. Gibson observed that without his diary he would not have known when Sunday arrived each week and would have been unable to observe the Sabbath. “I used to hail the return of sunday & keep it as a day of rest,” he noted on October 30 after being transferred to a prison near Florence, South Carolina, but “in this miserable Prison I would scarcely know the days of the week, were it not for this little Book.”

Gibson’s prayers were answered on December 14 when he discovered he would be among the “Lucky ones” to be paroled. He boarded the federal steamer New York in Charleston, South Carolina, on December 16, grateful to once again be under the “Stars and Stripes.” He reached the parole camp at Annapolis, Maryland, on December 22. Although the cold weather caused more suffering for the “thin & shattered condition” of the recent prisoners, he wrote on December 23, Gibson thought they were all “the most fortunate set of men in the world” that Christmas Eve.

Gibson returned to his family and received his official discharge from the army on March 14, 1865. His heath never entirely recovered from the time he spent at Andersonville, however, and he died at age 45 on December 2, 1878.

Inquiring Minds: Copyright Records Hint at Early America’s Preoccupations

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Joseph Felcone researches 19th-century New Jersey copyright records in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Photo by David Rice.

Copyright records are a valuable primary source for scholars seeking to understand the development of almost any aspect of American life. So wrote John Y. Cole, Library of Congress historian, in introducing a volume the Library published 30 years ago documenting the nation’s earliest copyright records—those dating from 1790 to 1800. They include copyright registrations for works as diverse as spelling books, maps, almanacs, sermons, and even a comedy in five acts.

President George Washington signed the first federal copyright law on May 31, 1790. It required authors to file printed title pages of their works with the district courts where they lived; after publication, the works themselves had to be sent to the Secretary of State. When Congress centralized copyright administration in the Library of Congress in 1870, most but not all of these early federal records were forwarded to the Library, as the law dictated.

New Jersey book collector and bibliographer Joseph Felcone spent several days in March in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, which preserves the early copyright records held by the Library. Felcone’s goal: to transcribe the New Jersey records from 1846 to 1870.

In 1994, Felcone published a transcription of New Jersey copyright records from 1791 to 1845. He discovered those earlier records in a federal building in Trenton, the state capital. Researchers thought they had been lost or destroyed, but it simply turned out that no one had forwarded them to the Library in 1870. Researchers continue to locate other early copyright records, especially as more historical documents are being scanned and made available electronically.

Felcone took a break from his research in March to answer questions about his work and his findings.

What draws you to the early copyright records as a researcher?

I’m a book collector and a bibliographer, and I’ve written a lot about the early New Jersey book trade—printing and publishing—and copyright is part of it. Copyright records can provide considerable bibliographical information, some of which is available nowhere else.

What inspired you to transcribe the 1846–70 records?

When I was here several years ago working on another project, Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, showed me the 1846–70 New Jersey copyright records, and I saw all these wonderful tipped-in title pages, package labels, photographs and drawings, and I knew I had to publish those records. The earlier New Jersey volume I transcribed in 1994 contains no inserted material, only transcribed titles. The printed title pages that were submitted with those copyright applications long ago disappeared. However, by the early 1850s, as proprietors of patent medicines began seeking copyright protection for labels and trademarks, the clerks found it easier to simply paste in the supplied label rather than attempt to transcribe or describe it. Soon they were doing the same with title pages and graphics.

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A photograph of a steam-powered robot pulling a wagon. The photo was registered in 1869 in U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. The court’s clerk pasted the photo into the copyright record book. Photo by Eric Frazier.

What do book registrations from this time tell you?

What’s most important to the historian is knowing about the books, pamphlets and other printed materials that were registered for copyright but do not exist today. This can often be tremendously valuable information. In some cases, these items don’t exist because they haven’t survived, or no copy has yet been found. However, most don’t exist because they were never published—even though the titles were registered. This tells us what an author or a publisher intended to do, and clearly worked on, but either did not finish, or finished but never printed. Copyright registrations provide the only record we have of these works.

What else do the records reveal?

Occasionally, though not often enough, you can learn the identity of the author of an anonymous or pseudonymous publication. When an author wished to remain anonymous, he or she normally would have the publisher apply for the copyright. However, once in a great while, a record will reveal that the author himself applied for the copyright, though the author’s name appears nowhere in the publication. I’ve had perhaps two instances of this in all the New Jersey records, but it can be of great importance, particularly in cases where an author later rose to prominence.

Valuable information is also found when a title is submitted for copyright and then, weeks or months later, the work is submitted a second time, with a different title. Since 19th-century titles could often be lengthy and very descriptive of a book’s contents, such title changes can reveal something about the creative process of an author.

What are the subjects of the book registrations you are transcribing now?

Quite a variety. Novels, plays, poetry, some how-to-do-it books. Several books on life insurance, which was an important industry in Newark beginning in the 1850s. There are a number of New Jersey histories, both local and statewide. Legal treatises were important, both professional works designed to assist members of the bench and bar as well as manuals of the everyman-his-own-lawyer variety.

Many of the works submitted for copyright were what we would call today “vanity” publications—the author was his own publisher as no commercial publisher would have taken on the work. Once I have completed my research, I think I’ll find that most of the works that haven’t survived, or that never saw the light of day, are of this genre.

What other types of registrations—besides books—are you finding?

Starting in the 1850s, almost half of the copyright registrations were for package labels—mostly for patent medicines. The advertised claims became more outrageous as time went on. After the Civil War, popular music became an important part of copyright registrations. I’m also finding maps, handbills, prints and photographs, political campaign badges, children’s games and artwork.

Who is the audience for your transcription?

Chiefly bibliographers and book historians—those who study the history of books, printing, the book trade, reading and so on. Also those interested in documenting the rise of popular or quack medicine as well as the advertising that drove that market. Also music historians and historians of photography—and of course New Jersey historians.

What are your most interesting finds so far?

As I mentioned, finding records of books that were contemplated, or even close to fruition, but probably never printed, are by far the most exciting finds. There are also two wonderful photographs in the records of steam-driven robots. The robots are fully dressed, top hat and all, but you can see the steam apparatus underneath, and the robot is pulling a wagon.

There are also two large pencil drawings by Lilly Martin Spencer—probably studies for paintings—that are almost certainly unknown to art historians. She was a very popular 19th-century artist who lived for years in Newark.

In the 1860s, Harold Brothers was a Plainfield, New Jersey, manufacturer of toys and games for children, and the records contain several delightful printed illustrations of its products, including directions for playing several of the games.

Can you comment on your research experience here at the Library of Congress?

Working in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library is a privilege and a pleasure. I have worked here many times, and it is always a perfect research experience.

World War I: Footlocker’s Contents Reveal Soldier’s Story

This is a guest post by Naomi Coquillon, an education specialist in the Interpretive Programs Office.

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C.F. Stensen (right) with his older brother, Erling, during World War I. The contents of a forgotten footlocker purchased on eBay brought C.F. Stensen’s story back to life.

When I began to develop educational programs for the Library’s new exhibition, Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I, I knew I wanted to give visitors the opportunity to touch objects from the period, to experience for themselves things a soldier actually carried. I hoped that handling original objects would enhance the experience of seeing the items from our collection on display and would truly make this history come to life for our visitors.

When I saw a World War I-era footlocker and its contents for sale on eBay, I scooped it up. It arrived full of items I had hoped for—a helmet, a haversack—but also of surprises, from a pouch filled with 100-year-old tobacco to the biggest surprise of them all: many of the items were marked with a name, C.F. Stensen.

The eBay dealer I worked with bought the footlocker in an estate sale on Long Island in the early 2000s but could not recall the name of the owner. So I used what I had—a partial name: C.F. Stensen; a location: New York; and a probable birthdate: some time between 1880 and 1900—and took to the internet. By searching military records on Ancestry.com, which is accessible in the Library’s Local History and Genealogy Research Room, I found a military service abstract and National Guard record for a “Christian F. Stensen.” I had a name!

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C.F. Stensen’s footlocker, purchased on eBay.

 

 

These documents told me more about my mystery soldier. Christian enlisted in the New York National Guard when he was 18 and was a private in the 107th Infantry Division. He served in France and was wounded in September 1918. From there, I examined census records, which told me that he was born in New York City in 1899 to immigrants from Denmark and Norway, and he had an older brother, Erling, and a younger sister, Agnes.

The more I learned, the more I wanted to know. I especially wondered what he looked like. I kept searching and, finally, I found it—a photograph of Stensen as a young man, arms crossed, looking off into the distance. It was posted by an Ancestry member, to whom I sent an email. “I am looking for Christian Stensen,” I wrote. “By any chance are you related to him?”

“Yes,” came the reply from a woman named Gerry. “I am his grandniece.” I could hardly believe it—I had uncovered the mystery of C.F. Stensen.

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C.F. Stensen as an older man wearing his World War I uniform.

Gerry connected me to Lynn, Christian’s granddaughter. When I sent her a photograph and a description of the footlocker to verify its ownership, she replied:

“OMG . . . that is his locker, and the contents I remember as a child, when on rare occasions he would take me upstairs to the attic, where he stored the locker, inside he would remove his uniform and I could see all the other items. This is my Grandfather, Christian Stensen, [on] one of those days where we had gone through his locker, as he needed the uniform for a special event.”

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A visitor examines Stensen’s footlocker on a “hands-on” cart, part of the Library’s World War I exhibition.

As Lynn and Gerry explained, Christian and Erling enlisted as soon they were old enough, and they served together in the war. They began a long history of military service in the family. Christian’s son was in the Navy during World War II, and his grandson served in Vietnam. Gerry sent more photographs of the brothers together and of her grandfather alone and with peers.

Lynn and Gerry agreed to donate the photographs and several documents from the footlocker to the Library’s Veterans History Project, which preserves and makes accessible the personal accounts of American war veterans. “Keep the photographs and other items as part of the collection . . . so many people can see and learn and understand,” Lynn said. “You have no idea how proud and honored I am that my Grandfather is connected to this historic event.”

Visitors can examine Christian’s footlocker and its contents at a moveable “hands-on” cart on Wednesdays, Fridays and some Saturdays outside of the Echoes of the Great War exhibition in the Thomas Jefferson Building until the exhibition closes in January 2019. At that time, at Lynn’s request, the Library will donate the footlocker and its three-dimensional items to the American Legion in Islip, New York, of which Christian was a member.

World War I Centennial, 2017–18 . With the most comprehensive collection of multiformat World War I holdings in the nation, the Library of Congress is a unique resource for primary source materials, education plans, public programs and on-site visitor experiences about the Great War including exhibits, symposia and book talks.

Pic of the Week: Poet Laureate Celebration

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Juan Felipe Herrera, center, dances on stage in the Coolidge Auditorium with Tylana Enomoto, left, and Martha González, right, members of the band Quetzal. Photo by Shawn Miller.

The Library hosted a day of festivities on April 26 to honor Juan Felipe Herrera as he concluded his second term as poet laureate consultant in poetry.

Titled “Speak the People/the Spark/el Poema,” the celebration began with a choral performance by the Fresno State Chamber Singers from Fresno, California, Herrera’s home town.

In the evening, a panel discussion took place about the emergence of Latino American culture and its influence on the nation. In addition to Herrera, the panelists were Martha González, lead vocalist for the Grammy Award-winning East L.A. rock bank Quetzal; Hugo Morales, the founder and executive director of Radio Bilingüe; and Louie Pérez, singer-songwriter with the band Los Lobos. Rafael Pérez-Torres, an English professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, moderated the discussion.

Immediately following the panel, a concert by Quetzal closed out the celebration.

A video recording of the celebration is available on the Library’s YouTube site.

 

 

New Online: Iconic Recordings, Presidential Papers and a Civil War Diary

The following is a guest post by William Kellum, manager in the Library’s Web Services Division. 

Since the last installment in this blog series, published in mid-March, quite a few new offerings have been added to the Library’s website.

Women’s History Month

March was Women’s History Month, and we updated the site we maintain in collaboration with the National Archives and Records Administration, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Gallery of Art, the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with new content and an all-new visual design.

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The Library’s Manuscript Division holds the papers of 23 of America’s presidents, from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge. Making its online debut is the Franklin Pierce Papers Collection. Pierce (1804–69), was an army officer, representative and senator from New Hampshire and the 14th president of the United States. His papers contain approximately 2,350 items dating from 1820 to 1869. They include correspondence, a photostatic copy of a diary Pierce kept while serving in the Mexican War, drafts of his messages to Congress and an engraved portrait. Pierce’s correspondence relates chiefly to his service in the Mexican War, public affairs and national politics.

Millard Fillmore (1800–74) isn’t included in the Library’s main Presidential Papers Collection because most of his papers are held by the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society in Buffalo, New York. But the Fillmore papers the Library does hold are now available for the first time on loc.gov. Fillmore was an educator and served as U.S. representative from New York, vice president and the 13th president of the United States. The online papers contain approximately 35 items spanning the years 1839 through 1925, with the bulk dating from 1839 to 1870. The papers include correspondence relating primarily to political issues such as slavery, the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and congressional politics.

National Recording Registry

The Library’s National Recording Registry is one of our most popular initiatives, routinely attracting wide press coverage and setting off some lively debates. Additions for 2016, announced in March, include Sonny Rollins, Judy Garland, Vin Scully, Wes Montgomery, Wilson Pickett, David Bowie, N.W.A and more.

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For Teachers

In conjunction with the Library’s major program to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the U.S. entry into World War I, a new World War I primary source set and teacher’s guide for classroom use is now available. The materials are also accessible in our student discovery set format for iPad through Apple iBooks.

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The World War I primary source set is available as a student discovery set, optimized for iPad.

From the Music Division

Albert Schatz (1839–1910) was a German music dealer with a lifelong interest in opera and its history. He traveled throughout Europe to collect opera libretti, including many first and early Italian, German and French editions from the 17th and 18th centuries. In the end, the Albert Schatz Collection totaled 12,000 operatic and 238 oratorio and cantata libretti. The scope of this digital presentation comprises all 12,238 Schatz libretti.

Civil War

Adding to our extensive online Civil War materials, the papers of Union soldier Samuel J. Gibson (1833–78) consist of a diary he kept while serving with Company B, 103rd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment, and a letter he wrote to his wife while being held at the Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in Georgia commonly known as Andersonville. The diary documents the capture of the federal garrison at Plymouth, North Carolina, in April 1864, and Gibson’s experiences as a prisoner of war at Andersonville and in Florence, South Carolina. Gibson records war news and rumors received by the prisoners, the state of his physical and emotional health, the deaths of fellow prisoners and the importance of his diary in maintaining a sense of time.

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Samuel Gibson’s diary includes details such as these entries from April 1864 in which he describes an onslaught by Confederate troops that ended in his capture.

18th-Century Socialite

The seven volumes of diaries and notebooks of Anna Maria Brodeau Thornton (ca.1775–1865) document her position at the center of a Washington, D.C., social circle that included George and Martha Washington, James and Dolley Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Margaret Bayard Smith and the cabinet members, congressmen and diplomats who constituted the city’s entwined social and political worlds. These volumes document the operation of her household, including the management of slaves; travel, including visits to the Virginia homes of George and Martha Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James and Dolley Madison; the construction of Washington, D.C., and the United States Capitol; the city under attack during the War of 1812; visits of the Count de Volney, 1796, and Alexander von Humboldt, 1804; an attempt on her life by Arthur, a slave, in 1835; the 1844 shipboard explosion that killed Secretary of State Abel Upshur and Treasury Secretary Thomas Gilmer; the inauguration of president James K. Polk in 1845; and the start of the Civil War.

The Library’s online presence goes back to the early 1990s, so upgrading and enhancing content that uses old technologies or presentations is a regular part of our work. Newly upgraded presentations include content related to the National American Woman Suffrage Association; the Vietnam-Era POW/MIA Database; and American Leaders Speak: Recordings from World War I (Nation’s Forum).

Happy 100th Birthday, I. M. Pei

This is a guest post by Mari Nakahara, curator of architecture, design and engineering in the Prints and Photographs Division.

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Former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy with I. M. Pei in 1964. He is speaking to the press about funding for the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, which he designed.

Chinese-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei celebrates his 100th birthday today, April 26. The Library of Congress is fortunate to have original design sketches by I. M. Pei as well as thousands of his manuscript papers.

With the beautiful spring weather in mind, I decided to revisit this master designer’s work by looking first at his drawings for the Louvre Museum in Paris—I did so while picturing myself humming “Aux Champs-Élysées” and enjoying the walk from the Arc de Triomphe to the Louvre. I then turned to Pei’s designs for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

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Whimsical rendering of Pei’s design for the Louvre pyramid by architect Walker Cain, 1984.

French President Francois Mitterrand commissioned Pei in 1983 to develop a solution to a long-term problem with the Louvre’s original entrance, which was no longer adequate to receive the increasing number of daily visitors to the museum. Pei’s innovative idea was to insert a 71-foot glass and metal pyramid in the center of a courtyard surrounded by centuries-old structures. As an architectural grad student when the pyramid was completed in 1989, I admired his imagination and technical skill tremendously. A shape from ancient times, made of modern materials, melded beautifully and astonishingly into a historical setting.

Pei’s careful study of axes in site-plan sketches includes one drawing in black and red that determines the center of the pyramid by connecting the site to the Arc de Triomphe. A site plan on the bottom of a sheet of yellow tracing paper highlights the large main pyramid with a small pyramid behind, water pools and pavement patterns. All of these elements repeat the diamond shape, reflecting the pattern in the metal structure of the pyramid.

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Site plan sketch for the Louvre, 1983.

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More sketches for the Louvre site plan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pei also created multiple models such as those shown below to study the structure and opening of the pyramid.

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Before the Louvre project, Pei worked on a design for the National Gallery of Art’s East Building in Washington, D.C., between 1968 and 1978. I can easily walk down the hill from the Library of Congress to the National Gallery of Art to enjoy this Pei masterpiece.

The triangular rhythms in the design sketches are what reveal Pei’s genius for me. He turned the unusual trapezoidal shape of the site to great advantage by creating a smaller but identically shaped trapezoid area and dividing it into two triangular buildings. The axis of symmetry of the larger triangle aligns perfectly with the central axis of the West Building. The hand-drawn diagram with diamond-shaped grids served as the basic module of Pei’s design of the East Building.

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Diagram for Pei’s design for the East Building of the National Gallery of Art, 1969.

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Sketches for the East Building.

Pei started one of his most significant commissioned projects in 1964—the John F. Kennedy Library. During the selection of the architect for the Library, Jacqueline Kennedy visited each nominated architect’s office. While others welcomed her with their definite ideas, Pei told her he did not yet know what the library would look like. He said he would like to propose his idea after he spent more time contemplating what John F. Kennedy would have liked. I think that was a gutsy response, and this answer caught her heart. As shown in the photo at the top of this post, Mrs. Kennedy and Pei are both smiling at the press conference called to announce that public contributions to the fund for the library had exceeded $10 million.

Pei’s serious studies of traffic and pedestrian flows also influenced his design for the Kennedy Library. The two sketches below, right, represent his concept of combining triangular, square and round shapes.

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Site plan study for the Kennedy Library.

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Sketches for the Kennedy Library.

“I think a great building reaches into the folklore, if that is the right word, of the people it serves,” Mrs. Kennedy wrote to Pei in 1981.

“I hope it touches you the way it has affected the lives of all who live near it or discover it as they come to Boston by land, sea or air. . . . You made that possible for Jack. I will always think of it as a monument to your spirit—to your humanity and perseverance. . . . With my deepest thanks that stretch back through the years, and with much love, Jackie.”

 

This letter must have been very rewarding, especially after all the challenges Pei had to overcome during this project.

Congratulations on your centennial birthday, Mr. Pei!

The original materials described in this blog post and related items will be on view in the Library’s Jefferson Building from mid-May to early June. Once the dates are set, they will be posted in the Library’s events calendar.

Learn More

The Prints and Photographs Division holds visual materials from the I. M. Pei Papers. Additional materials will be transferred from the Manuscript Division this year.

The I. M. Pei Papers are available for research in the Manuscript Division. A finding aid for the collection is being prepared and will be available by the end of this year.

The Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division holds transcripts and photographs from the John Peter Collection (1951–95), including an interview with Pei.

Free to Use and Reuse: Travel Posters

Faraway states, natural wonders and beautiful beaches—these are the settings that often come to mind as we start to plan our summer vacations. They also form the backdrop of hundreds of travel posters in the Library’s collections, including an assortment featured this month on the Library’s home page. The featured posters are U.S. government works, in the public domain or cleared for public use by copyright owners—meaning you can use them as you wish.

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Frank Hazell’s poster of West Point as seen from the window of a train car.

Travel posters are now sometimes sold at auction for tens of thousands of dollars, but they began as ads for a burgeoning industry. Following advances in color lithography, railways began producing art-oriented posters in the late 1800s to sell seats. Steamship lines, resorts, hotels and later airlines adopted the medium as well, some employing well-known graphic artists to tempt travelers with scenes of glamour, beauty, adventure and leisure. Travel posters enjoyed the height of their popularity from the 1920s through the 1950s.

Frank Hazell (1883–1958) was a landscape artist who also worked in advertising in New York City. He painted travel posters and brochures and taught advertising art at the Grand Central School of Art. His commissions included a 1920s painting of the United States Military Academy at West Point as seen from the window of a New York Central Lines car traveling alongside the Hudson River in the autumn. The image is part of the Library’s online Artist Poster Collection. Hazell also did poster art for steamship companies and other institutions.

Katherine Milhous (1894–1977), an artist, illustrator and writer, supervised the Philadelphia Federal Art Project, a branch of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), from 1935 to 1940. Her duties included creating posters promoting Pennsylvania into which she incorporated familiar Pennsylvania Dutch designs. Several Milhous posters are included in the Library’s online collection of WPA posters. Milhous won a Caldecott Medal in 1951 for “The Egg Tree,” a children’s book she wrote and illustrated about the Pennsylvania Dutch Easter.

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One of Katherine Milhous’s Pennsylvania travel posters.

This month’s featured posters are just a small sample of the Library’s digital collections that are freely available for your use. The digital collections comprise millions of items, including books, newspapers, manuscripts, prints and photos, maps, musical scores, recordings and more. Whenever possible, each collection item has its own rights statement. Please remember that rights assessment is your responsibility. For more information, see the Library’s guidance about copyright and Library collections.

Join the Celebration: Library to Livestream Events Honoring Poet Laureate

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Juan Felipe Herrera at the Library of Congress in September 2015. Photo by Shawn Miller.

The Library of Congress will honor Juan Felipe Herrera, who is concluding his second term as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, with celebratory events on Wednesday, April 26. The events will be streamed live on the Library’s Facebook page and its YouTube site.

Titled “Speak the People/the Spark/el Poema,” the celebration will kick off at noon with a choral performance by the Fresno State Chamber Singers, who hail from Herrera’s hometown of Fresno, California. They will perform newly commissioned pieces developed in collaboration with Herrera.

At 7 p.m., a panel discussion will take place about the continuing emergence of Latino culture and its influence on the nation. Participants will be Herrera; Martha González, lead vocalist for the Grammy Award-winning East L.A. rock bank Quetzal; Hugo Morales, the founder and executive director of Radio Bilingüe; and Louie Pérez, a singer and songwriter with the band Los Lobos. Rafael Pérez-Torres, an English professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, will moderate the discussion.

Immediately following the panel, a concert by Quetzal will close out the celebration. Quetzal brings together a wide range of musical influences, including Mexican ranchera, cumbia, salsa, rock, R&B, folk and fusions of international music. It is recognized as a leader and innovator in Chicano music.

About the celebration, Herrera said, “Meshing poetry and music with the Fresno State Chamber Singers, a panel on Latino culture, music by Quetzal—this night is a culmination of two years of beautiful and thoughtful audiences; of trains, planes, cars, highways, children, teachers and artists; of poetry seekers driving for miles to listen and exchange and tell me about their lives. This event will have all the love I can bring to it, and all the appreciations that have been given to me during these last two years; I hope to give back.”

Herrera is the author of 30 books of poetry, novels for young adults and collections for children. He has been one of the most active poets laureate in the history of the position, with two first-term projects and three second-term projects.

This past September, Herrera launched an online initiative, “The Technicolor Adventures of Catalina Neon,” a bilingual illustrated poem created by Herrera and artist Juana Medina. Presented at Read.gov, the poem features contributions by second- and third-grade students and their teachers and librarians from across the country.

Continuing his work with students, Herrera and the Library of Congress collaborated throughout the 2016–17 school year with the Poetry Foundation in Chicago and the Chicago Public Schools on a program titled “Wordstreet Champions and Brave Builders of the Dream” in which Herrera worked with high school English teachers to develop new exercises and strategies for teaching poetry.

Herrera’s third initiative during his second term involved creating the “Laureate Lab—Visual Wordist Studio” to serve as a performance and classroom space in the library of California State University, Fresno, where Herrera once taught. He uses the space to develop small-scale, dynamic programs and classes for the local community, mixing poetry with visual arts, song and movement.

For his poetry, Herrera has received two Latino Hall of Fame Poetry Awards, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award and a PEN/Beyond Margins Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Stanford University Chicano Fellows. In 2016, Herrera was awarded the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement at the 36th L.A. Times Book Prizes.

The festivities honoring Herrera and the work he has done as poet laureate are presented by the Library’s Poetry and Literature Center, its American Folklife Center, its Music Division and its Hispanic Division.

Pic of the Week: Two Poets Honored with Bobbitt Prize

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Nathaniel Mackey

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Claudia Rankine

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poets Nathaniel Mackey and Claudia Rankine accepted 2016 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prizes for Poetry at an evening event at the Library of Congress on April 20. The Bobbitt Prize recognizes the lifetime achievement of an American poet or a distinguished book of poetry written by an American and published during the preceding two years. This year, prizes were awarded in both categories.

Mackey, the author of six poetry collections, most recently “Blue Fasa,” received a lifetime achievement award. Rankine received the 2016 prize for “Citizen: An American Lyric,” selected as the most distinguished book of poetry published in 2014 and 2015. Both poets read from their works.

View past winners of the Bobbitt Prize on the Library’s website.

Photos by Shawn Miller.