1919

May 7 – Robert Todd Lincoln, the son of former president Abraham Lincoln, deposits a major collection of his father’s papers in the Library. He donates them formally on January 23, 1923, on the condition that they are kept sealed until 21 years after his own death. He dies in 1926, and accordingly the papers are opened to the public on July 26, 1947.

75. Photographer Mathew B. Brady opened a daguerreotype studio in New York City in 1844. He went on to become one of America’s greatest documentary photographers. As he once said, “From the first, I regarded myself as under obligation to my country to preserve the faces of its historic men and mothers.”

1920

December 7 – Librarian Putnam presides over ceremonies marking the planting of the first memorial tree on Library grounds. The tree honors four Library of Congress servicemen who died in World War I. Subsequent memorial trees have recognized not only Library of Congress employees who fought in World War II, but also staff who have made outstanding administrative contributions to the institution.

December 20 – The Prints Division reports the acquisition of more than 300 original daguerreotype portraits of prominent Americans made between 1845 and 1853 by the studio of photographer Mathew B. Brady of Washington, DC, and New York. The collection was transferred to the Library from the US Army War College.

1921

September 29 – President Warren G. Harding issues an executive order directing the transfer of the original copies of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution from the Department of State to the Library of Congress. The documents are transferred the next day.

76. Under the supervision of Librarian Putnam, the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were loaded into the Library’s Model-T Ford mail wagon, for transfer from the State Department to the Library of Congress.

77. Harriet DeKraft Woods, the Library’s first woman superintendent of buildings and grounds, in 1922. The superintendent’s responsibilities were transferred to the Architect of the Capitol for budget reasons that year, but Woods remained at the Library until her retirement in 1928.

1922

March 22 – The president approves the Appropriations Act for fiscal year 1923, which includes $12,000 for a “shrine” within the Library for the public display of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

May 9 – Representative Robert Luce of Massachusetts, on behalf of the Joint Library Committee, reports in favor of a bill that would abolish the office of the Library’s superintendent of buildings and grounds and transfer its responsibilities to the Architect of the Capitol and the Librarian of Congress. The Architect of the Capitol would be responsible for the building’s structural work, repairs, physical equipment, and operation of the physical plant. On June 29, President Harding approves an act of Congress making these changes, which become effective on July 1, 1922.

1923

December 3 – In his 1923 annual report, Putnam emphasizes the “imperative need” for a new bookstack, which will fill the Library’s northeast courtyard, and the need to improve the salaries of the Library’s staff, upon whom “the future of the Library as a learned institution must rest.”

1924

February 7–9 – The Library sponsors three chamber music recitals, which are held at the Freer Gallery in Washington, DC, and supported by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in connection with her gift to the Library of the original scores of several musical compositions. Putnam hails the event as an especially “notable recognition by our Government . . . of music as one of the finer arts—entitled to its concern and encouragement.”

February 28 – In the presence of President Calvin Coolidge, Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes and a representative group of congressmen, Putnam places the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution in a specially designed “shrine” for protection and public exhibition. The ceremony takes place “without a single utterance save the singing of two stanzas of ‘America.’”

1925

January 19 – With approvals from Congress and President Coolidge, Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge (no relation) makes a $60,000 gift to support construction of an auditorium within the Library for the performance of chamber music. Through a deed executed by the Northern Trust Company of Chicago, Mrs. Coolidge establishes an endowment, to be paid annually to the Librarian of Congress, to aid the Music Division “in the development of the study, composition, and appreciation of music.” The division will be able to hold concerts, conduct music festivals, and award prizes for original compositions. In addition, the division chief will receive an honorarium recognizing the “special labor and responsibilities” imposed by such activities. The first Library of Congress chamber music concerts take place in the new Coolidge Auditorium, located in the northwest courtyard, on October 28–30, 1925.

March 3 – President Coolidge approves an act of Congress creating a Library of Congress Trust Fund Board, enabling the Library to accept and administer gifts or bequests of personal property for the benefit of the Library, its collections, or its services.

March 4 – Congress approves funding for the construction of a new bookstack in the northeast courtyard.

August 10 – In a letter to Andrew W. Mellon, secretary of the treasury and chairman of the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board, James B. Wilbur establishes an endowment for the acquisition, in photocopy, of “manuscript material on American history in European archives.” In 1933, Mr. Wilbur endows a chair of geography and provides funds for the development of additional source materials in American history.

December 7 – The Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, New Jersey, donates a Victrola and a collection of 412 recordings.

December 7 – In his annual report for 1925, Putnam describes Mrs. Coolidge’s gift and endowment as “absolutely consistent with the scheme and policy of the Library as the National Library and an agency of the Federal Government, which is, not to duplicate local or ordinary effort, nor supplant it where the project is within its proper fields or abilities, but to do for American scholarship and cultivation what is not likely to be done by other agencies.” He asserts that the Coolidge gift and the Wilbur and Coolidge endowments have initiated a “new era” for the Library.

78. V. Valta Parma (left), who served as the Library’s first rare book curator from 1926 until 1940, sharing a volume with a patron. Parma’s major interest was building the collections of American popular culture, including dime novels and children’s literature. However, he also pursued acquisitions in more traditional areas; during this period the Library’s holdings of early printed books increased markedly, most notably through the 1930 purchase of the Vollbehr collection of incunabula, which included one of the three perfect copies of the Gutenberg Bible.