John Adams Building

Brief Information

The John Adams Building appeared as an annex to the main building of the Library of Congress, but it is arranged almost like a separate machine for storing books. Above ground it has five floors, with the upper one set back 11 meters from the main body. Inside, there are more levels than can be seen from the outside: from the basement to the fourth floor, there are twelve of them.

This gap between the external volume and the internal arrangement explains why the library needed the building. It housed 290 kilometers of shelving, noticeably more than in the Jefferson Building. Later it was named after John Adams, because it was he who, in 1800, approved the law establishing the Library of Congress.

What to Notice First

The building is best read through the combination of a strict shell and specially conceived details. The white marble facing from Georgia gives it an official exterior, while the materials listed in the source — acoustic panels, Formica, Vitrolite, and glass tubing — show that construction used not only familiar stone, but also solutions that were new for the time.

The most meaningful detail is on the bronze doors of the west and east entrances. Lee Lawrie connected them with the history of writing: among the figures named are Hermes, Odin, Ogma, Itzamna, Quetzalcoatl, Sequoyah, Thoth, Cangjie, Nabu, Brahma, Cadmus, and Tahmurath. These doors turn the entrance to the library building into a brief map of the origins of writing. Another hidden part of the design is the underground passage to the library’s main building: the annex was connected to the former center not only administratively, but also physically.