Library of Congress Fire, Dec. 22, 1825
- The interior of the Thomas Jefferson Building, where the Library of Congress is housed today. AP Photo
On this day in 1825, the Library of Congress, located on the west side of the Capitol, caught fire. As he left a Capitol Hill dinner party that evening, Rep. Edward Everett of Massachusetts noticed a light glowing in a window near the library. Everett told a Capitol police officer what he had seen. But the officer, who lacked a key to the library door, dismissed Everett’s concern.
Other officers, however, saw the glow rise in intensity and summoned the librarian of Congress, George Watterson, to the Capitol. Watterson and the police then discovered a fire on the upper level of the library. Reps. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Sam Houston of Tennessee arrived on the scene, along with Everett, to help fight the fire.
Firefighters managed to extinguish the blaze before it could spread to the ceiling and other parts of the Capitol. After the smoke settled, they determined that an unattended candle had caused the fire.
The damage proved much less extensive than the inferno of August 1814, when the British torched the Capitol and much of the city, as well. Among the items lost in the 1825 fire were duplicate copies of books and an expensive rug. The incident prompted Congress to ask Charles Bulfinch, the architect of the Capitol, to introduce flame-retardant materials for the library and the Capitol.
On Dec. 24, 1851, the largest fire in the library’s history destroyed 35,000 books, about two-thirds of its 55,000-volume collection. The loss included about two-thirds of the 6,487 books that Congress had bought from Thomas Jefferson for $23,950 in 1815 to replace and augment the 3,000 volumes that had been burned by the British.
The Library of Congress moved out of the Capitol with the completion of the Thomas Jefferson Building in 1897.
SOURCE: HISTORIAN, CLERK OF THE U.S. HOUSE