Library of Congress Jefferson Building, District of Columbia

The Thomas Jefferson Building was the first separate building to house the Library of Congress, after the library outgrew its allotted space inside the Capitol building, in 1897. The Library of Congress is the official library of the nation, and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It was established in 1800 as a reference library for Congress. Most of the original library (with 3,000 volumes) was destroyed by the British in the War of 1812, and the new library was assembled by buying Thomas Jefferson’s personal library of 6,487 books in 1815. Many of these were destroyed in a fire at the Capitol in 1851, when the library had grown to 35,000 volumes (most of the destroyed volumes have since been replaced). By 1876, the library had grown to 300,000 volumes, and close to a million by 1900. The library is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill: The Jefferson Building; the Adams Building, built in 1939; and the Madison Building, which opened in 1976. It also includes the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, where films, television, radio, and other time-based media formats are digitized and conserved. There are also off-site storage facilities used by the library.