The Capital: Monumental Amends

For all its myriad statues and monuments, Washington has seen fit to ignore the memory of 23 U.S. Presidents.* Perhaps the most remarkable omission is that of James Madison, author and sponsor of the Bill of Rights, chief architect of the U.S. Constitution, the fourth and one of the most erudite Chief Executives in the nation’s history, whose name is today most celebrated by the Manhattan avenue that has become a synonym for advertising. Last week the House voted to make amends, authorized construction of a $75 million annex to the Library of Congress, to be named the James Madison Memorial Building.

For the library, as for the President, the vote came none too soon. Groaning under the weight of 44 million manuscripts, books, prints and other material, and faced with an annual increase of a million items, the library has had to stack its hoard in the offices and passages of its two existing buildings and consign the overflow to such makeshift extensions as a former aircraft paint hangar in Middle River, Md., 50 miles from the capital.

In addition to providing badly needed shelf and office space, the new annex will house the Madison papers and those of 22 other Presidents, and incorporate a memorial hall devoted to the works and artifacts of the man it honors. To be erected on a two-block site across the street from the original Library of Congress, the Madison Library will culminate years of effort by Representative Howard Smith (D., Va.), chairman of the House Rules Committee, who represents the congressional district in which Madison lived. It will be the most appropriate possible tribute to the American who, as a 33-year-old Representative in 1783, was the first to work for the establishment of a Library of Congress.

* Those honored: Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Buchanan, Lincoln, Grant, the two Roosevelts, Kennedy.