By DONNA URSCHEL
More than two years ago, in anticipation of its 200th birthday, the Library of Congress drew up a list of potential gifts, historically significant and rare materials that would add depth and diversity to the Library's existing collections.
All sorts of things were on the list: the Harry A. Blackmun papers, a Beethoven letter, the letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay, the Martha Graham Archives, long-playing jazz discs, identical books from Thomas Jefferson's original library, a Persian celestial globe, the Revolutionary War maps drawn by Lafayette's cartographer and many more items. The categories included Americana; maps, atlases and globes; rare books and foreign rarities; performing arts and visual arts.
In addition to acquisitions, the Library had lists of endowed chairs and curatorships, symposia, exhibitions and general outreach initiatives.
Through the addition of these gifts, the Library aimed to enrich the collections, to make them available to the broadest possible public and, thereby, strengthen its service to the nation. The Library hoped its friends and donors would join in the birthday celebration by making a "Gift to the Nation."
"The importance of the Gifts to the Nation project cannot be overestimated," said Dr. Billington. "Even the world's largest library needs to continue to enrich its collections with important items. The re-creation of Jefferson's library and the acquisition of other rare items that the Library is seeking will benefit our millions of patrons worldwide.
" There were no disappointments on April 24. Through the generosity of private donors, the Library received more than $40 million in donations and gifts.
More than half, $22 million in gifts, was given by members of the Library's Madison Council, a private sector advisory group of 100 prominent cultural, business and philanthropic leaders. The Madison Council represents 3 percent of the donor base, according to Larry Stafford of the Library's Development Office. The remainder, $20 million in gifts, came from the other 97 percent of donors.
One of the most ambitious Gifts to the Nation projects is the reconstruction of the original core of the Library, the vast and diverse personal collection of Thomas Jefferson.
In 1815, Jefferson sold his 6,487 volumes to Congress for $23,950, after the British in 1814 burned the U.S. Capitol, including the 3,000 items of the Library of Congress.
Jefferson, a man of encyclopedic interests, had the largest and finest library in the country, containing books in French, Spanish, German, Latin and Greek on a wide variety of subjects: architecture, the arts, science, literature, engineering, philosophy, wine-making and geography. About 11 horse-drawn wagons carried the books from Monticello to the Capitol.
At 7:30 a.m., on Christmas Eve 1851, disaster struck again, when nearly two-thirds of Jefferson's books were destroyed in another Capitol fire that was started by a faulty chimney flue.
Thanks to a five-volume bibliography that describes Jefferson's library as it was in 1815, the Library knows what was in the original Jefferson collection. The bibliography was started in 1943 by E. Millicent Sowerby, as a Jefferson Birthday Bicentennial project (Jefferson was born in 1743.) The first volume was published in 1952 and the last in 1959. Sowerby worked from Jefferson's manuscript list of the books in 1815 and other Library of Congress manuscript lists. She also perused Jefferson's letters to get further descriptions of the books.
Sowerby's bibliography lists 4,931 titles; some entries represent multi-volume sets. Sowerby was able to determine which original books were still in the Library and which matching editions could be found in Library collections. Sowerby's groundwork was invaluable nearly 45 years later, when the Library, as a Bicentennial project, decided to re-create the 1815 Jefferson Library.
"There was no serendipity. We knew there were duplicates," said Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, "but locating, retrieving and consolidating several thousand volumes from all corners of the Library was a demanding challenge."
Many entries were located, but 1,012 remained missing. The Library started buying the missing titles on the antiquarian market.
Their purchase is made possible by a $1 million gift from Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and his wife, Gene, and by a $100,000 gift from James Elkins and his wife, Margaret.
So far, the Library has bought nearly 300 titles. Mr. Dimunation said the prices for the books vary greatly. "We're getting some for as little as $200 to $300. The most expensive book was $30,000," he said.
Several books have been donated, including one from the University of Virginia, which held two copies of Constantin-Francois Volney's The Ruins: Or a Survey of the Revolutions of Empire, which was translated from the French and published in 1796 by William A. Davis in New York.
The Library still needs 597 titles to complete the Jefferson project. Mr. Dimunation said the Library is combing the antiquarian market, working with an agent, contacting dealers, looking on the Internet and generally asking for help. But he is not sure all the items can be found.
"Some of these books are small pamphlets. Just by their physical nature, they're not likely to have survived," he explained.
Mr. Dimunation also said the books are not the kind that modern bibliophiles are collecting. Jefferson's collection was a working tool; he bought books for their contents. Jefferson did not buy books the way many bibliophiles do today: because they are first editions or in an unusual format.
One thing is certain. The Library would not consider buying a different edition of a needed book. "No," Mr. Dimunation said forcefully. "That would be corrupting the bibliography."
As each book comes into the Jefferson library, more is revealed about Jefferson himself.
Mr. Dimunation said recently in a speech, "Jefferson interacted with his books as if in an intellectual dialogue. They prompted ideas, they fed arguments, they posed puzzles, they offered practical advice, and they explained the unknown forces of the universe. Each book that entered his collection opened another opportunity. And because Jefferson often wrote to others regarding his books, we can follow along as Jefferson leaps, linking one idea to the next."
Although the reconstruction of the Jefferson library has received much attention, many other extraordinary Gifts to the Nation have been donated to the Library.
The Geography and Map Division is celebrating the acquisition of six rare manuscript maps that were drawn by Michel Capitaine du Chesnoy, the skilled cartographer who served as the Marquis de Lafayette's aide-de-camp during the American Revolutionary War.
The purchase of the maps was made possible by a $650,000 gift from Gerry and Marguerite Lenfest, members of the Madison Council.
"There are only 18 Capitaine maps in existence. Now we have six," said John Hebert, chief of the Geography and Map Division.
In addition to their rarity, the maps hold great value for the Library because they provide a deeper understanding of events during the Revolutionary War.
"The maps shape a much more full history -- who were the participants in the war and how they interacted," said Mr. Hebert.
As a group, the maps document major aspects of Lafayette's activities while serving as a volunteer in the Continental Army directly under Gen. George Washington's command. Gens. Lafayette and Washington eventually brought the fight for independence to a successful conclusion with the surrender of Cornwallis on Oct. 19, 1781, at Yorktown, Va.
Idealistic and just 19 years old when he arrived in America in 1777 to assist his hero George Washington in the battle for liberty, Lafayette was accompanied by the talented Capitaine, who served as his aide-de-camp. Today, Capitaine is recognized as one of the finest cartographers of his time.
The maps are beautifully drawn, hand colored and in pristine condition. There is a large map of the 1781 Virginia Campaign, which is accompanied by a brief handwritten text; there are two plans of the 1778 military activities in and around Newport, R.I.; a plan of the retreat from Barren Hill in Pennsylvania, 1778; a map of the Battle of Monmouth, N.J., 1778; and a map showing troop movements between the battles of Ticonderoga and Saratoga in New York, 1777.
The large map of Virginia is considered to be one of the most important examples of Revolutionary War cartography. It documents the many skirmishes and military engagements that took place in 1781 on the long road to victory at Yorktown. Washington directed Lafayette to go to Virginia after the Battle of Monmouth. Capitaine accompanied Lafayette southward, thoroughly documenting sites of engagements in Virginia. He also provided an abundance of economic and social information, including the locations of mills, ferries, plantations and places of worship.
Previously, these maps were in private hands, and their use was restricted to scholars of 18th century America. At the request of the Library's Geography and Map Division, the New York firm of Richard B. Arkway Inc. located the maps and facilitated their purchase.
Another extraordinary acquisition is the Kenneth Walker Architectural Drawings Collection. The Walker collection is an important addition to the Library because it demonstrates how the architectural drawing developed, artistically and technically, over the last four centuries.
Although valued at more than $1 million, the collection was purchased for $500,000; the other half was donated by Kenneth Walker. The Library's portion was made possible through a donation of $500,000 from Nancy Hart Glanville, a Madison Council member and chair of its Visual Arts Acquisitions Subcommittee.
The more than 120 drawings, now located in the Prints and Photographs Division, represent the work of many masters, such as Antoine Derizet, John Nash, Antonio Sant-Elia, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, Rem Koolhaas, Michael Graves, Aldo Rossi, Charles Gwathmey, John Hejduk, Louis-Pierre Baltard, Ferdinando Galli Bibiena, Erich Mendelsohn, Hector Guimard, Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph, Edwin Lutyens and Stanford White.
C. Ford Peatross, the Library's curator of Architecture, Design and Engineering Collections, said other architects, in addition to masters, are included. Also, a variety of drawing types, media and methods of representation are part of the collection, which is both historically and geographically broadly based and includes examples from Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, England, India, Japan, Mexico and the United States.
Mr. Peatross said he is "thrilled" to acquire the Walker Collection, as it greatly enhances the scope and prestige of the Library's existing collections and will promote scholarship. Mr. Walker, in turn, is delighted to see his collection go to the Library and remain intact as a teaching tool, said Mr. Peatross.
Mr. Walker, who received his master's in architecture from Harvard and is now a leader in retail design, collected the drawings from the 1960s to the mid-1980s.
Mr. Peatross said the collection helps to show how architectural drawings really developed. During the Italian Renaissance, architectural drawings became increasingly sophisticated. Travel by architects and the more frequent exhibition and publication of their drawings fostered technical and artistic advances in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, Mr. Peatross said, architectural drawings reflected the enormous developments in building technologies, from the use of new materials such as iron and steel and entirely new methods of construction, to the introduction of elaborate and constantly evolving systems for plumbing, heating, cooling, ventilating, illuminating and moving people to, from and within buildings.
The collection reveals more than history. Maricia Battle, assistant curator of Architecture, Design and Engineering Collections, said, "It's interesting to look and compare the drawings and see who was influenced by whom." She and Mr. Peatross displayed drawings and pointed out how Frank Lloyd Wright's son, Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier were obviously influenced by Antonio Sant-Elia.
Not all Gifts to the Nation go to the specific purchase of an item. A number of generous donations have been placed in the American Legacy Endowment, established by Edwin L. Cox, vice chairman of the Madison Council. The endowment supports the future acquisition of important, historically significant items for the national collections.
Charles Durham, a Madison Council member, donated $1 million to the endowment. Nancy Hart Glanville, who helped the Library purchase the Walker architectural drawings, gave another $500,000 to the endowment.
Through a gift arrangement, John Kluge, chairman of the Madison Council, gave $3 million to the Library, which is being used to support numerous events of the Bicentennial celebration this year and over the next few years.
"I am especially grateful for the support and friendship of the Madison Council members and other Library patrons," said Dr. Billington, "Thanks to the generosity of so many, unique historical materials are being brought into America's library, where they will be preserved and made available for future generations."
Ms. Urschel is a freelance writer in the Public Affairs Office.