Visitors to the New York Public Library's main reading room are not likely to gaze enraptured at ornamental moldings, cherubs and vast, uninterrupted ceilings as they cope with poor lighting, uncomfortable chairs and often slow service. Reed's room-by-room architectural tour, a panegyric to the Fifth Avenue building, asks us to believe it is "a people's palace," even though its ornate turn-of-the-century style modeled on classical Paris and Rome has...

Arguably the most beautifully decorated building in the United States, the Library of Congress building (now known as the Jefferson Building) reached its 100th anniversary in 1997 after an eighty million dollar restoration that returned it to its original state. At the turn of the century, Herbert Small, a newspaperman, wrote a guide to the building and its decoration. His text, edited by Henry Hope Reed, is reproduced here. It is preceded by introductory...