. Book of the Royal blue . the book stacks. This portionof the construction is of enameled brickof a very light yellow. The rotunda or i6 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. main reading room is topped with ahuge copper covered dome of noble pro-portions which is rendered all the moreconspicuous by a film of gold of twenty-three karats with which, at an expenseof §3,800 this great dome was covered,excepting the ribs. The exterior walls are constructedof a close-grained granite from quarrieslocated at Concord, New Hampshire,and is used rough in the basement story,more finely dressed in the first story, east a
. Book of the Royal blue . the book stacks. This portionof the construction is of enameled brickof a very light yellow. The rotunda or i6 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. main reading room is topped with ahuge copper covered dome of noble pro-portions which is rendered all the moreconspicuous by a film of gold of twenty-three karats with which, at an expenseof §3,800 this great dome was covered,excepting the ribs. The exterior walls are constructedof a close-grained granite from quarrieslocated at Concord, New Hampshire,and is used rough in the basement story,more finely dressed in the first story, east and west sides into pavilions, whichare a trifle higher than the rest of thebuilding, and are of more ornate example of the unique in archi-tecture is the scheme of decoration ofthe first story window keystones withethnological heads. There are thirty-three of these heads, each about eigh-teen inches in height, modeled byMessrs. Boyd & Ellicott after casts anddata from Professor Mason of the Na-tional COERIDOB SMITH OF MAIN KNTIIANC .K—I .ONliKESSIi IXAL LIBRARY. and entirely smooth in the second story. In height the building is seventy-two feet; divided, basement fourteenfeet; first story, twenty-one feet, andsecond story twenty-nine feet, the bal-ance of eight feet being in base of build-ing and in the balustrade surmount-ing it. As a relief to possible monotony thewalls are projected at the four cornersof the building and in the center of the All of these heads are chiseled aftermodels entirely correct as to racial dif-ferences, have been subjected to theseverest tests of measurement, and formas a whole one of the most original andmost interesting of architectural embel-lishments the world can to-day produce. This work was rendered all the moredifficult by reason of the use of a coarse-grained stone (granite), made necessaryby rule of conformity, the surrounding LIBRARY OF COA GRESS. 17 construction being of the same material. As a relief to the eye the
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Keywords: ., bookauthorbaltimoreandohiorailr, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890
