DC By the Book

Excerpt: It was amazing how different the Great Hall looked compared to when we’d come during normal hours. Multicolored lights gave it a party feel, and giant reproductions of famous book covers were hung as decorations. People mingled in clusters while a jazz quartet played on a stage.

Excerpt: Down here, the building showed its age. Over the course of 120 years, it had been built and rebuilt so many times the hallways and storage rooms were mazelike in their complexity.

Excerpt: I carefully scanned the room, which was one of the nicest at FBI Headquarters. It had marble floors, two massive stone fireplaces, and large paintings depicting famous moments in American history. I was used to welcome visiting delegations and hold special events. Today it was hosting the reception for the Bureau’s annual awards ceremony.

Excerpt: Unlike the reception area or the main hall, there were no marble floors or works of art down here in the bowls of the building. In fact, there was no decoration of any kind, just a long narrow corridor with pea-green walls and tomato-red doors. It was as if the building’s color scheme was dictated by the soup menu in the cafeteria.

Excerpt: The library had a modern design with glass walls that made it bright and airy. There were vertical orange panels on the second floor that resembled the pages of an open book.

Excerpt: “I knew we were coming, so I looked it up. It has a special vegetative roof to absorb rainwater. The floors and countertops are all made from recycled materials. And because there are so many windows and natural sunlight, it needs less electricity for lighting.”

Excerpt: On the second floor, the main room was laid out with rows of bookcases in the middle and computer workstations along the windows. There was an area with overstuffed chairs where patrons sat reading and several study rooms along the far wall. Since all the walls were glass, you could see into everything. In this building, “in plain sight” was the only place to hide.

Excerpt: Unlike the “box within a box” where we discussed secrets at FBI Headquarters, this room was completely exposed to outside eyes.

Excerpt: The outside of the Folger Shakespeare Library fit perfectly with the imposing marble buildings of Capitol Hill, but once we walked through the doors, it was as if we’d traveled back in time. With oak paneling along the walls and banners hanging from the vaulted ceilings, it looked more like seventeenth-century England than present-day Washington. We asked a security guard about the tour, and he directed us to the Founders’ Room, which had a large wooden table, high-back chairs, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and paintings on the wall.

Excerpt: Even though the library was across the street, we had to walk all the way around the building to reach the entrance. A large fountain with sculptures of Neptune and other mythological creatures was in the front, and as we walked up the stairway that wrapped around it, Marcus acted as our tour guide. “This is the largest library in the world with three buildings here on Capitol Hill and a few more on a campus in Northern Virginia. Its main purpose is to provide research and information for members of Congress so they’re properly informed as they debate the issues of government.”

Excerpt: We passed through security and entered a massive room with giant staircases, arches, and columns. The marble floors had intricate designs, and there were countless artistic details and elements like murals and mosaics. There were also statues and busts of famous leaders and literary figures.

Excerpt: We had to snake our way through a pair of large school groups as we followed Marcus up a staircase to the second floor. When we reached the door to room 239, he stopped and turned to us. “This is the Rare Book Reading Room,” he said. “It’s only supposed to be used by people who are doing research, so there’s no telling how much time we’re going to get in there.”

Excerpt: The room was pretty but not ornate. A handful of readers were sitting at long wooden tables, and a chandelier hung in the middle of the room. Two librarians worked silently behind a reference desk, and a third was organizing books on a small wooden cart. It was so quiet, my first instinct was to hold my breath to keep from making any noise. “This room was designed to look like the one in Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed,” Marcus whispered.

Excerpt: Alistair Toombs pressed a button under his desktop, and the door behind him clicked open. We followed him into a vestibule that had a wall of lockers on one side and the door to his office on the other. “There are over eight hundred thousand items in this department, and most of them are one of a kind, which makes them impossible to replace,” he said as he waved his ID badge in front of a magnetic card reader to unlock the door marked RARE BOOK AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS STACKS. He opened the door, and we entered a darkened room that extended farther than we could see. Lights above us flickered to life, revealing a seemingly endless maze of bookshelves. “Those are new,” Marcus said, referring to the lights. “I had them installed a couple years ago,” he said. “Now all lighting in the stacks is motion activated. If there’s no movement in an area for three and a half minutes, the lights in that zone turn off. It protects the collection from unnecessary exposure to ultraviolet rays.” “Is the darkness what makes it colder?” Margaret asked as she crossed her arms in a shiver. “No, that’s the climate control,” he said. “Temperature and humidity are kept at optimal levels, which is seven degrees cooler than the reading room.”

Excerpt: The shelves were filled with books and containers that looked like cereal boxes lined up with the narrow sides out. I pointed to one and asked, ”What are these?” “We make custom boxes to provide an extra layer of protection for items that are particularly vulnerable,” he said. “Like this one.” He scanned the shelf for a moment and pulled out a tan box with the number 158 written on the top corner. He placed it on the empty portion of the shelf and opened it like a clamshell to reveal a small brown book tattered with age. Margaret and I shared a look of anticipation, and he pulled it out for us to see. “This is Thomas Jefferson’s personal copy of The Federalist Papers.”

Excerpt: Normally the paint on a wall will fade due to sunlight and other factors, but because there were no windows and so much was done to protect the books from temperature and humidity, the walls looked almost freshly painted, which is why it was so easy to spot the discoloration in one area. There was a spot about two feet by two feet that had been repainted a slightly different shade of brown. "What was here?" I asked. "Aren't you the eagle eye," he said. "That was an entrance to a book tunnel.” “What’s a book tunnel?” asked Margaret. “They’re throughout the library and connect to the different committee rooms in the Capitol,” he explained. “Our first responsibility is serving the Congress. When this building first opened, it featured a conveyor belt system that carried books back and forth. You’d load them on in here and some congressional staffer would take them off in there.”

Excerpt: The Petworth Library resembled an old-fashioned schoolhouse with red brick walls, white-framed windows, and a cupola on the roof. It reminded me of Alice Deal Middle. Not that Margaret and I were concerned with architecture as we approached the entrance.

Excerpt: The first thing I noticed when we stepped inside was that the floor in the main room was actually a giant map of Northwest Washington with a gold marker indicting the location of the library. A librarian at the front desk directed us upstairs to find the children’s department. Almost the entire second floor was devoted to children’s books. There was an area for little kids, a separate story time room, and a large reading room with big wooden bookcases, seating, and tables, and a large fireplace.

Excerpt: So we just rode quietly along Piney Branch Parkway, a two-lane road that wound through a heavily wooded section of the city. The late-afternoon sun and the changing color of the leaves gave everything a brown-and-orange glow.

Excerpt: A large balcony wrapped around the second floor looking down over the Great Hall, and we stood there and watched all the people. There were the ever-present school groups and all the workers setting up for the gala. They were putting place settings on all the tables and the clinking of plates and silverware was almost musical. “It really is a beautiful building,” said Margaret as we looked over it all. “Hard to believe there are spies lurking about,” I said. “Not really,” she said. “With halls and tunnels that connect to the Capitol, it was bound to happen.”

Excerpt: “In one of the articles, it said there’s still an opening in the Main Reading Room. There’s an exhibit there about the history of the tunnels.” I poked my head inside and looked up the incline toward a faint light. “I can see it,” I said. “About fifty yards away.” I pulled back out and gave her a look. “Mostly uphill.” (I left out the part about it being incredibly dark and scary looking.)