Folger Shakespeare Library Tour
August 25 @ 10:00 am - 11:00 am
Join the DC Preservation League for a unique opportunity to tour the historic Folger Shakespeare Library on Capitol Hill. The tour will be led by: Amanda Edwards, Associate Principal and Architectural Conservator at MTFA Design and Preservation; Emily Eig, Architectural Historian and President/CEO of EHT Traceries, Inc.; and Ruth Taylor Kidd, CFO of the Folger Shakespeare Library, who oversaw the renovation. The tour will include visits to the building’s historic spaces including the Theater, the Great Hall, the Reading Room and the Founders Room. Guests will be able to visit the new Pavilion on their own immediately following the tour. The Folger recently reopened after a four year, $80.5 million renovation that has made the historic building accessible and added a new public wing, the Adams Pavilion, with 12,000 square feet of public space. See the building free of other visitors on this morning tour, then explore the space independently after the library opens to the public at 11:00 AM.
The Folger Shakespeare Library, designed by Paul Philippe Cret, was dedicated in 1932 and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The Folger is an extraordinary building, an American monument to another country’s national hero in the heart of Capitol Hill. Its modernized classical exterior and English Renaissance interior (the contrasting styles are lovingly referred to as “Tudor-deco”) earned it a place on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969. This designation was expanded in 2018 to include the original interior of the building. The recently added public wing (Adams Pavilion) houses two new exhibition halls that will offer visitors opportunities to engage directly with the Folger’s world-class collection, including its 82 copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio which will be displayed together to the public for the first time. Accessible garden entrances and visitor lobbies, a café, a new learning lab and collaborative research spaces, and an expanded gift shop are among the visitor amenities and building enhancements added during the four-year construction project.
