The Exterior of the Jefferson Building
Depicted above are examples of the series of
ethnological heads found
around the exterior of the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of
Congress
 As
you leave the Jefferson Building, be sure to take note of the series of
ethnological heads (33 in all) that ornament the keystones of the first-story
windows all around the building. They were modeled on a collection of
life-size heads of different ethnic races, from Arab to Zulu, at the Smithsonian
Institution.
 The
nine great men commemorated by the busts across the portico of the front
entrance pavilion at the second-story level are each silhouetted in front
of a round window. They were selected by Librarian Ainsworth Rand Spofford
and are, from left to right as you stand in front of the building: Demosthenes,
Emerson, Irving, Goethe, Franklin, Macaulay, Hawthorne, Scott and Dante.
They were carved by Herbert Adams, Jonathan Scott Hartley and Frederick
W. Ruckstull.
Finally, in front of
the building, pay a last homage to King Neptune, the Roman god of the
sea and the brother of Minerva, and his court in the Neptune Fountain,
which was sculpted by Roland Hinton Perry.
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