BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Library of Congress -- Room: Main Reading Room (room itself)

DC -- Library of Congress -- Room: Main Reading Room (room itself):

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. LOCMRR_120220_175.JPG: Miss International contestant
Multi Column: Number of columns of thumbnails to appear per page (normally defaults to 3): [1 col] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Description of Subject Matter: THE MAIN READING ROOM

Visitors should take the elevators to the third floor to view the Main Reading Room from the Visitors' Gallery, or walk up the two flights of marble stairs.

The Eight Symbolic Statues and Their Inscriptions:

From the Visitors' Gallery, eight large statues can be seen above the giant marble columns that surround the reading room. They represent eight categories of knowledge, each considered symbolic of civilized life and thought. Their titles are inscribed in gilt letters on a tablet in the frieze below them. Beginning with the figures on the east side of the room--from the perspective of the Visitor's Gallery--the symbolic statues are: Philosophy, by Bela Lyon Pratt; Art, by Francois M.L. Tonetti-Dozzi (after sketches by Augustus St. Gaudens); History, by Daniel Chester French; Commerce, by John Flanagan; Religion, by Theodore Baur; Science, by John Donoghue; Law, by Paul Wayland Bartlett; and Poetry, by John Quincy Adams Ward.

Above each statue is a large tablet bearing an inscription in gilt letters. Each of the eight inscriptions, appropriate to the subject of the statue below it, was chosen by Harvard University President Charles W. Eliot.

Above the figure of Philosophy:
THE INQUIRY, KNOWLEDGE, AND BELIEF OF TRUTH
IS THE SOVEREIGN GOOD OF HUMAN NATURE.
Bacon, Essays, "Of Truth"

Above the figure of Art:
AS ONE LAMP LIGHTS ANOTHER, NOR GROWS LESS,
SO NOBLENESS ENKINDLETH NOBLENESS.
Lowell, Yussouf

Above the figure of History:
ONE GOD, ONE LAW, ONE ELEMENT, AND ONE FAR-OFF DIVINE EVENT,
TO WHICH THE WHOLE CREATION MOVES
Tennyson, In Memoriam

Above the figure of Commerce:
WE TASTE THE SPICES OF ARABIA YET NEVER FEEL
THE SCORCHING SUN WHICH BRINGS THEM FORTH.
Anon. [Dudley North, East India Trade]

Above the figure of Religion:
WHAT DOTH THE LORD REQUIRE OF THEE, BUT TO DO JUSTLY,
AND TO LOVE MERCY, AND TO WALK HUMBLY WITH THY GOD?
Holy Bible, Micah 6:8

Above the figure of Science:
THE HEAVENS DECLARE ...More...
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
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- 2023_DC_LOC_MRR: DC -- Library of Congress -- Room: Main Reading Room (room itself) (73 photos from 2023)
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- 2004_DC_LOC_MRR: DC -- Library of Congress -- Room: Main Reading Room (room itself) (10 photos from 2004)
- 2002_DC_LOC_MRR: DC -- Library of Congress -- Room: Main Reading Room (room itself) (2 photos from 2002)
- 1999_DC_LOC_MRR: DC -- Library of Congress -- Room: Main Reading Room (room itself) (7 photos from 1999)
- 1997_DC_LOC_MRR: DC -- Library of Congress -- Room: Main Reading Room (room itself) (5 photos from 1997)
Same Subject: Click on this link to see coverage of items having the same subject: [Libraries] [Library of Congress (Everything)] [Library of Congress (Non-Events)] [US Capitol Complex]
2012 photos: Trips this year: three Civil War Trust conferences (Shepherdstown, WV, Richmond, VA, and Williamsburg, VA), a week-long family reunion cruise of the Caribbean, another week-long family reunion in the Wisconsin Dells (with lots of in-transit time in Ohio and Indiana), and my 7th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including side trips to Zion, Bryce, the Grand Canyon, etc). Ego strokes: I had a picture of Miss DC, Ashley Boalch, published in the Washington Post. I had a photograph of the George Segal San Francisco Holocaust memorial used as the cover of Quebec Francais (issue 165). Not being able to read French, I'm not entirely sure what the article is about but, hey! And I guess what could be considered to be a positive thing, my site is now established enough that spammers have noticed it and I had to block 17,000 file description postings for Viagra and whatever else.. Equipment this year: My mainstays were the Fuji S100fs, Nikon D7000, and the new Fuji X-S1. I also used an underwater Fuji XP50 and a Nikon D600. The first three cameras all broke this year and had to be repaired. Number of photos taken this year: just below 410,000.
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