I was wary about working on this project, as the experience of the building's original architects, Smithmeyer and Pelz, had been anything but pleasurable. A dispute over payment to the architect went all the way to the Supreme Court, and Smithmeyer's reputation was so ruined by the experience that he was caught in the building in 1899, loading a revolver; he was apparantly contemplating suicide.
The heart of the Library is its Main Reading Room; Arthur Cotton Moore/Associates was the consulting architect on the Jefferson Building's renovation. - Michael Dersin
When we started our work in 1981, the interiors were no longer glorious. The entire building had become a giant rabbit warren of beaverboard and drywall cubicles for almost 5,000 people. Acoustical tile and drywall ceilings, at the basic minimum height of 8 feet, had been hung from wires casually screwed into the architectural details of the towering arched halls far above. When we poked our heads up above the cheap drop ceiling, we blinked at the panorama of flamboyant and ornately decorated vaulted chambers, with their allegorical murals that had not been seen in 50 years.
The Jefferson Building was arguably one of the most elaborately decorated structures in the New World -- but it was greatly in need of renovation. The problem lay in the Library's basic mission: As the world's greatest library, it was attempting to house the most dynamic product of all: knowledge.
The opening of the Madison Building in 1980 allowed us the chance to restore and rethink this national treasure.
Demolition of the miles of beaverboard was greeted by genuine expressions of amazement, as we became like archaeologists. We made many discoveries as the layers of accretion were stripped away, but none more sobering than finding that all this magnificence was protected by just a few hand-held fire extinguishers -- all the more remarkable in view of the fact that the Library, when it was in the Capitol, had sustained two major conflagrations.
Restoration involved incorporating everything from basic wiring and sprinkler systems to provisions for the next century -- but all in a way that made them unobtrusive and sympathetic to the design. The marble tile floors were trenched for wiring and then carefully replaced; there was no chance of getting more marble from the original source, as it no longer existed. Sprinkler heads and emergency lighting spots became the centers of rosettes in the coffered ceilings. Baseboards were replaced by double-celled chambers and then faux painted to look exactly like the original wood.
Past attempts at cleaning and patching had been disastrous, as in the faded mosaic tile in the main west pavilion, from an earlier attempt at abrasive cleaning. Thus two elaborate drawings were made of each space in both the Jefferson and its 1930s annex, the John Adams Building, depicting the damage on one sheet, and on the other, detailed delineations with elaborate cleaning codes for the complete restoration.
For the Main Reading Room, experts devised a system of sprinklers concealed inside the Roman arches in the surrounding loggias from which a fire-suppressing deluge can be delivered. To help suppress sound, we designed a special carpet that would muffle footsteps and a soundproof glass box on the upper level of the reading room for the Visitors' Gallery. Formerly occupying a quarter of the room, the old card catalog was removed to make more room for reader desks.
But the main task was how to prepare this old treasure house for the 21st century. Along with restoring the most precious public spaces, we had to create a plan to enable the "working" parts of the building to function now and in the future without damaging the recently renewed interior.
We reactivated the notion of a set of subordinate reading rooms occupying each of the grand halls (curtains) providing improved access to a specific branch of knowledge. Conceived and designed like large pieces of furniture in dark mahogany, these mini-buildings occupy about half the space in the room and are constructed of hollow members permitting an almost infinite variety of wiring and access for 21st century information delivery systems. Like furniture, they also could be replaced without compromising our carefully restored historic interior shell. The architectural design refers abstractly to both famous precedents in European libraries and to the Baroque design of the building. The colonnade structure contains the offices (and their attendant noise and clutter) of the specialists and librarians who help people do research in the field. These newly balconied reading rooms are subdivided by angular bookcases to create study areas for readers in an open forecourt in front of the colonnade.
To the casual observer the building has been restored to the way it looked in 1897; however, in many ways it will never be the same. Through the wonders of technology, it is a better space -- safer and more accessible to all.
