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EXTREMESHEAVY METALA deeply felt tribute to abridge in a book made ofaluminum.The iconic suspension bridge that connectsBrooklyn and Manhattan has inspired greatart and artists since the day it openednearly 140 years ago.Frank Sinatra sang about the BrooklynBridge. Georgia O’Keeffe and Andy Warholpainted it. Walker Evans photographed it,and Hart Crane wrote an epic poem about it.The bridge makes countless cameos in film— “It Happened in Brooklyn,” “Moonstruck,”“Spider-Man” and many others.To those works, add Donald Glaister’s 2002book “Brooklyn Bridge A Love Song,”an homage that is as innovative as it isheartfelt. The book, along with other worksby Glaister, are held by the Library’s RareBook and Special Collections Division.Ordinary materials wouldn’t do for a volumeabout such an iconic structure. So, Glaister,a master bookbinder, built his book out ofstuff more befitting the subject: aluminum,wire, sand, acrylic paint, aluminum tape andpolyester film. The volume itself is housed ina felt-lined aluminum box.Glaister made the book’s pages outof sanded aluminum, and on them heemblazoned a poem he had written intribute and his own painted “portraits” of thespan. Granite and limestone towers loomagainst the rose and blue of a morning sky.Shifting colors evoke different times of day,and abstract forms suggest the massivenetwork of cables that holds the deck some127 feet above the East River. Master bookbinderDonald Glaisterconstructed this homageto the Brooklyn Bridgefrom aluminum, wire,sand, acrylic paintand other materials.Rare Book and SpecialCollectionsThe Brooklyn Bridge — designed by JohnRoebling and completed by his son,Washington Roebling in 1883 — was thelongest suspension bridge in the world atthe time of its opening. It has experiencedmuch since.Glaister’s verse — like the materials thatcarry it — celebrates the bridge’s strengthand timeless grace:The Bridge endures.She has seen it all. Peace and war,plenty and need, vice and honor,the sublime and the horrific.She stands watch and does not yield.The gracious lady stands in the riverand does not yield.—Mark HartsellJULY/AUGUST 2021 LOC.GOV/LCM7

PAGE FROM THE PAST Walt Whitman tracedhis journeys around theU.S. and in Canada inred on the map at right.Prints and PhotographsDivision, ManuscriptDivisionWHITMAN’SJOURNEYSThe great poet recorded histrips across America andCanada on this map.Poet and essayist Walt Whitman loved citystreets, the beauty of a ferry crossing,whirling gulls and the outdoors. He collectedleaves and pressed them into a scrapbookand made the sea, the sky, stars, woods,marshes and the melodic calls of birds thesubject matter of his poetry.Strongly influenced by transcendentalistphilosophy, he traveled sweepingly in hismind’s eye to geographic regions across theUnited States and around the globe, writingof farms and fields and redwood groveswitnessed only in his imagination.The travel lines inked on this railroad mapshow actual journeys he took into thehinterland, to New Orleans in 1848 while anewspaperman, to Washington, D.C., wherehe worked as a civil servant from 1863 to1873, across the Great Plains to the ColoradoRockies in 1879, up into Canada in 1880, andto New England in 1872 and again to visitRalph Waldo Emerson in 1881.—Barbara Bair is a historian in theManuscript Division.8LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE

CURATOR’S PICKSOUR PICK OF THEPARKSLace up your hiking boots fora trip through favorite nationalparks-related items fromLibrary collections.MAPPING THE CANYONGeographers knew little about theGrand Canyon until the middle of the19th century. First published in 1882,“Tertiary History of the Grand CañonDistrict” summarized what was knownin a beautiful way. Illustrations byThomas Moran and William Holmescapture the canyon’s grandeur,and maps detail its topography andgeology. The volume, produced byClarence Dutton and issued by theU.S. Geological Survey, served as thefoundation upon which later mapping ofthe canyon was based. The Geographyand Map Division holds the illustratedatlas that accompanied Dutton’s longerreport.Geography and Map DivisionTHE FIRST PARKThe Yellowstone region was littleexplored before Ferdinand Haydenled an expedition into its wilds in1871. A report by Hayden to Congressrevealed an unimaginable land —erupting geysers, boiling hot springs,bubbling mudpots, raging waterfalls— and helped convince Congress tomake Yellowstone our first nationalpark, in 1872. In Hayden’s party wasartist Thomas Moran, who capturedYellowstone’s wonders in workssuch as this view of a geyser basin,reproduced in a chromolithograph by L.Prang & Co.Prints and Photographs Division10LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE

YELLOWSTONE, ON FILMOnly a hardy few made the arduousjourney to remote Yellowstone in itsfirst years as a park. That began tochange in 1883, when a spur of theNorthern Pacific Railroad arrived at thepark’s northern boundary. From there,eager tourists boarded stagecoachesand rode out to see Yellowstone’swonders. Films made by the ThomasEdison company in the 1890s captureglimpses of this: Tourists arrive bycoach at Mammoth Hot Springs andwave to the camera as they head offinto the park, ready for adventure.Motion Picture, Broadcasting andRecorded Sound DivisionCAMPING WITH TEDDYIn 1903, a three-day camping tripin Yosemite led by naturalist JohnMuir helped change the course ofconservation. Muir’s backcountrycompanion was President TheodoreRoosevelt, who loved the outdoorsand was interested in conservation.The outing made a deep impressionon the president: Roosevelt went onto create five new national parks andsign the Antiquities Act, which he usedto protect the Grand Canyon and otherwilderness areas. Here, Roosevelt andMuir take in Yosemite Falls from GlacierPoint — one of the most glorious viewsin all of the national parks.Prints and Photographs DivisionPARKS IN POSTERSIn the 1930s and ’40s, the federalWork Projects Administration (WPA)commissioned posters designedto publicize exhibits, theatricalproductions, educational programs —and the beauty of America’s nationalparks. The Library holds the largestcollection of WPA posters, some ofwhich capture the parks in their wildglory: iconic Old Faithful geyser eruptsin Yellowstone, sandstone cliffs towerover Zion, steam pours from Lassenvolcano and, here, bighorn sheep poseagainst a backdrop of mountain peaksand burnt orange sky.Prints and Photographs DivisionJULY/AUGUST 2021 LOC.GOV/LCM11

PARKSFOR THEPEOPLEThe Olmsted family createdan amazing array of outdoorspaces across America.BY BARBARA BAIR12LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE

Frederick Law Olmsted(left) and Calvert Vauxcreated the design forCentral Park in New YorkCity (opposite) from1857 to 1861. Prints andPhotographs DivisionFrederick Law Olmsted and his sonshad a far-seeing vision for the Americanlandscape, of green spaces made for themasses, of parks and public grounds thatwould offer natural beauty and spiritualhaven in the heart of big, bustling cities.Over the course of two generations, theOlmsteds helped forge the professions ofurban planning and landscape architecture.They were pivotal in the design of a myriadof residential communities, city parks andgrounds of public and private buildingsthat remain in use across the nation.The Olmsted philosophy stressing theimportance of shareable green space andthe benefits for health, spiritual renewal anddemocracy through access to the outdoorsstill abides.The Library is home to Olmsted’s papersand the records of the Olmsted Associatesfirm. As a young man, Olmsted apprenticedand learned engineering, garden design andhorticultural techniques. He traveled abroadand to the Deep South and the West. Heworked as an organic farmer, journalist andadministrator before embracing landscapearchitecture as his life’s work.Olmsted is best known for his 1857–1861design, with Calvert Vaux, of Central Park inNew York City. Over the next century, he andhis successors shaped an amazing arrayof public parks and parkways, suburbancommunities, campuses, cemeteries,estates and grounds for hospitals andgovernment buildings, from the EmeraldNecklace of Boston to parks in Seattle, theBiltmore estate of North Carolina, the U.S.Capitol and Mount Royal in Montreal.Central Park was a visionary prototypecrafted and shaped into a variety oflandscapes: craggy rocks, meadows,woodlands and ponds, carriage paths,walking trails, arched bridges and apromenade and plaza — all intended toevoke different feelings and uses.This “Park for the People” was designed,Olmsted said, for working girls, urbanresidents and tourists of various faiths andclasses to experience scenic outdoors ina gregarious way. The park helped visitorsforget their workaday worlds, giving thema space to meet friends, play games, walk,find solitude, picnic with toddlers and courtlovers along tree-lined lanes.It would bring the same restorative beautyand benefit to a public citizenry that couldotherwise only be enjoyed in rarely visitedcountryside or reserved to the privateprivilege of the well-to-do. It provided a wayto escape, but also to find oneself, in anenvironment where everything appearedto be wondrously natural and yet wasmeticulously planned, civil engineered andplanted.In the 20th century, Olmsted’s sons JohnCharles Olmsted and Frederick (Rick) LawOlmsted Jr. carried on their father’s legacythrough the Olmsted Brothers/OlmstedAssociates firm.A member of the McMillan Commission andU.S. Commission of Fine Arts in Washington,D.C., Rick Olmsted helped shape the NationalMall, East and West Potomac Park, RockCreek Park, Theodore Roosevelt Island, theU.S. Arboretum and the National Zoo astravel destinations. He went on to consult forthe national park and California state parkssystems.The Library is partnering with the NationalAssociation for Olmsted Parks andother organizations and conservanciesto celebrate the 200th anniversary ofOlmsted’s birth in 2022 — a tribute to theidea of public spaces in America.MORE INFORMATIONPapers of Frederick Law Olmstedgo.usa.gov/xH3paJULY/AUGUST 2021 LOC.GOV/LCM13

FINDINGAMERICA14LIBRARY OF CONGRESS MAGAZINE

ON THE ROADA journey through a quintessentiallyAmerican phenomenon, the familyvacation by car.BY JOSH LEVYJULY/AUGUST 2021 LOC.GOV/LCM15

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In 1960, John Steinbeck set out on amonthslong road trip to reacquainthimself with his country. He returnednot with clear answers but with hishead a “barrel of worms.” The Americahe saw was too intertwined with howhe felt in the moment, and with hisown Americanness, to permit an objectiveaccount of the journey. “External reality,” hewrote, “has a way of being not so externalafter all.”Pandemics aren’t the only reason Americanshave found sanctuary in our homes, or theonly anxious times we’ve itched to escapethem. The American road trip was firstpopularized during the auto camping crazeof the 1920s, with its devotion to freedomand communing with nature, but it wasdemocratized after World War II. The goldenage of the American family vacation cameduring the very height of the Cold War. It wasa time when, according to historian SusanRugh, the family car became a “home onthe road a cocoon of domestic space”in which families could feel safe to exploretheir country.The trips 20th-century Americans took,to national parks and resorts and historicsites, generated a wealth of traveloguesand other sources that often communicatefar more about the traveler than the roadtaken. They can help us understand ourown moment as well. Earlier this year, just29 percent of Americans felt comfortabletaking a commercial flight, but 84 percentwere comfortable using their own vehiclesfor a road trip. During the pandemic, tourismsuffered but road trips surged. Driving intothe great outdoors again felt like a safeescape.The Manuscript Division is full of roadtrip stories, not because it maintainsspecific road trip collections but becauseautomobile travel has been so centralto modern American life. Items in thedivision range from administrative recordsmapping out early guidebooks, to breathlessjournals recounting shared adventures,to testimonials of discrimination faced atroadside gas stations, restaurants andhotels. Together, they tell the story not ofone America, but of many.Researchers can find in the papers of theWorks Progress Administration the recordsof the American Guide Series, a Depressionera project to create richly texturedguidebooks of all of America’s states andmajor cities and some of its highways andwaterways. The series generated 378 booksand pamphlets altogether and employedsubsequently celebrated authors likeRichard Wright, Eudora Welty and Zora NealeHurston. Opposite: JournalistA.B. MacDonald puttogether this scrapbookof a road trip he tookin 1938 with daughterMary, who passedaway shortly after theirjourney. ManuscriptDivisionThe books were needed. Railroads, oneof the 19th century’s great symbols ofmodernity, had run along immovabletracks following set timetables. Richand poor travelers alike were essentiallyreduced to pieces of baggage. Earlyautomobiles promised a pathfindingfreedom, but motorists found America’sintercity roadways disjointed and virtuallyunmarked. Colossal early touring guideslike the Automobile Blue Book prescribedtedious turn-by-turn directions throughthe maze, but offered little insight into localcommunities.The WPA guides blended an attention tolocal history, culture and commerce witha literary sensibility. The project’s ambitionstill startles. An early prospectus promisedto advance efforts to “preserve nationalliteracy and historic shrines, to exploitscenic wonders and to develop naturaladvantages such as mines and quarries.”Steinbeck later called the guides “the mostcomprehensive account of the United Statesever got together.” Staffers, sometimesroad-tripping to fact check their work,labored to create a nuanced, encyclopedicaccount of what mattered about America —one mapped out in routes Americans coulddrive for themselves. Preceding pages: The Apollo theater in Harlem (fromleft); an Alabama Crimson Tide football game; the TidalBasin in Washington, D.C.; the beach at Atlantic City; ahome in Key West; the New York City skyline; and a foodstand at the Colorado state fair. Prints and PhotographsDivisionJULY/AUGUST 2021 LOC.GOV/LCM17

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Yet not all Americans traveled those routeswith the same ease. The records of theNAACP, held by the Manuscript Division,contain hundreds of testimonials speakingto the uncertainties and humiliations JimCrow-era African Americans faced whenthey ventured from home. For thesemotorists, the automobile’s promise offreedom coexisted with segregated busesand trains and a range of limitations on theirmobility. Black drivers experienced the openroad, according to historian Cotten Seiler,as “both democratic social space and racialminefield.” Automobiles seemed to offer areal escape from Jim Crow, but one thatalways lay just beyond the horizon.As a result, excursions often turned sour.One letter, submitted in 1947 by a high schoolscience teacher, details an afternoon roadtrip to a state park near Albany, “for thepurpose of sightseeing and enjoying thenatural beauty of the State of New York.”When a hotel bartender within the parktwice refused service to the teacher anda Jewish colleague, he insisted the hotelbe “made to pay” for his “humiliation anddamage to my pride.” Similar testimonials,of injustices on buses and trains and atroadside stops, illustrate the road trip’sunfulfilled promise for African Americantravelers. But they also suggest the allureof commanding one’s own vehicle and ofsidestepping more communal forms oftransit.Travelogues in collections of personal papersoffer another dimension still, documentingboth cosmopolitan tourism and nostalgicreturns home. A travel journal in thepapers of sociologist Rilma Oxley Buckmandescribes a footloose road trip from Indianato Alaska, taken in 1950 with a Purduecolleague in a late model Nash. The “ladycampers” had met in Yokohama just afterthe war, both working with the U.S. military.Adventuring their way north, they socializedand took snapshots. They noted the“Huckleberry Finn riverscapes” of Illinois andAlaskan roads “wobbly as a wagon trail.” Buttheir lives in Asia repeatedly intervened, frombirds that resembled Korean magpies tothe Japan-like hot springs of the CanadianRockies and then to worrying radio reportsabout the start of the Korean War.A scrapbook made by journalist A.B.MacDonald recounts a road trip with hisdaughter Mary in 1938, just four yearsbefore he died. From Kansas City to hisboyhood home in New Brunswick, fatherand daughter visit the old “homestead,”drink at a roadside spring where the familyonce watered their horses and catch upwith boyhood friends. Captions are writtentwo years later in a shaky hand, fromMacDonald’s sickbed. By that time, Maryhad tragically passed away. Above hisrecollections of an old schoolmate’s home,whose bed of nasturtiums both had admiredas a “perfect blanket of gold and crimson,”two flowers just received by mail arepressed into the paper. There, MacDonaldwrites, “Later — I did put two of the flowerson Mary’s grave, and there they remainedfor several weeks. She knew, of course shedid.” Opposite: In 1950,sociologist RilmaOxley Buckman anda colleague drove alate model Nash fromIndiana to Alaska andrecorded their journey inthis journal. ManuscriptDivisionAnd there are more. The Library’smanuscript collections show suffragistsembracing the automobile as a vehicle forwomen’s liberation and activists like SaraBard Field staging cross-country journeysto gain publicity for the cause. They showCarlos Montezuma, cofounder of the Societyof American Indians, defending the rightsof indigenous Americans to purchaseautomobiles without government permissionand to travel as they please. We even findpolitical satirist Art Buchwald in a comicallyoverloaded Chrysler Imperial, on a 1958 roadtrip from Paris to Moscow in order to testwhether such a drive can be made “withoutbeing arrested.”Road trips appear in unexpected places,and they can be revealing in unexpectedways. And in a nation knitted together withhighways, cars long ago became Americans’liberating, frustrating, memory-makinghomes on the road.—Josh Levy is a historian in theManuscript Division.JULY/AUGUST 2021 LOC.GOV/LCM19

AGAIN AND AGAINOver many miles and years,photographer Highsmith is takinga full-length portrait of America.BY MAR

Library of Congress Magazine. is issued bimonthly by the Office of . Communications of the Library of Congress and distributed free of charge to publicly supported libraries and research institutions, donors, academic libraries, learned societies and allied organizations in the United States