=The General Character of the Building.=--Of the splendid and monumental building itself, it may be stated, before entering upon a detailed description--and stated, too, with hardly any fear of contradiction--that it is the most perfectly adapted for the convenient use and storage of books of any large library in the world. It is the largest, the costliest, and the safest. It is absolutely fire-proof, not through any ingenious arrangement or contrivance, but by the very quality of the materials of which it is built--granite, brick, marble, iron, steel, and terra-cotta. Wood floors are used in many of the rooms, but they are merely a carpet of boards laid upon terra-cotta or brick vaults. It would be impossible for the Library to burn down; a fire would nowhere have an opportunity to spread. The great size of the building is perhaps best appreciated from a statement of the amount of some of the materials used in it: 409,000 cubic feet of granite, 500,000 enamelled brick, 22,000,000 red brick, 3,800 tons of steel and iron, and 73,000 barrels of cement. The draughting office turned out, during the eight years that the Library was under construction, 1,600 plans and drawings. Exclusive of the cellar, the total floor-space is 326,195 square feet, or nearly eight acres; and the whole number of windows is about 2,165. As a matter of “library economy,” the arrangement of the building is of great interest. The problems to be solved were mostly new ones. In a paper on the Library, read before the American Library Association, Mr. Green said: “Its design was preceded by few or no good examples of library architecture, and was therefore the outcome of theory and deduction rather than the application of established principles.” This task was not undertaken in any dogmatic way, however; “the effort was,” as Mr. Green went on to say, “to plan on general rather than particular principles, and afford the largest latitude for expansion and re-arrangement in the use of the spaces.” So far, however, as general interest is concerned, it is the magnificent series of mural and sculptural decorations with which the architecture is enriched that has contributed most to give the Library its notable position among American public buildings. Although a similarly comprehensive scheme of decoration was carried out at the World’s Fair in Chicago, and afterwards in the new Public Library in Boston, the Government itself had never before called upon a representative number of American painters and sculptors to help decorate, broadly and thoroughly, one of its great public monuments. Commissions were here given to nearly fifty sculptors and painters--all Americans--and their work, as shown throughout the building, forms the most interesting record possible of the scope and capabilities of American art.