| Packard Campus | |
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| 38°26′35″N77°58′23″W / 38.44306°N 77.97306°W | |
| Location | 19053 Mount Pony Road, Culpeper, VA |
| Established | 2007 |
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| Website | www |
The National Audiovisual Conservation Center, also known as the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation, is the Library of Congress's audiovisual archive located inside Mount Pony in Culpeper, Virginia.
From 1969 to 1988, the campus was a high-security storage facility operated by the Federal Reserve Board. With the approval of the United States Congress in 1997, it was purchased by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond via a $5.5 million grant, done on behalf of the Library of Congress. With a further $150 million from the Packard Humanities Institute and $82.1 million from Congress, the facility was transformed into the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, which completed construction in mid-2007, and after transfer of the bulk of archives, opened for free public movie screenings on most weekends in the fall 2008. The campus offered, for the first time, a single site to store all 6.3 million pieces of the library's movie, television, and sound collection. [1]
Technically, the Packard Campus (PCAVC) is just the largest part of the whole National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC), which also consists of the Library of Congress's Motion Picture and Television Division and Recorded Sound Division reference centers on Capitol Hill, the Mary Pickford Theater, and any other Library of Congress audio-visual storage facilities that remain outside the Packard Campus.
The PCAVC design, named Best of 2007 by Mid-Atlantic Construction Magazine, [2] involved upgrading the existing bunker and creating an entirely new, below-ground entry building that also includes a large screening room, office space and research facilities. Designers BAR Architects, project-architect SmithGroup and landscape designers SWA Group, along with DPR Construction, Inc., collaborated in what is now the largest green-roofed commercial facility in the eastern United States, blending into the surrounding environment and ecosystem. [3]
With Cold War tensions came fear that in the event of a nuclear war, the economy of the United States would be destroyed. In response to this, the United States Federal Reserve constructed a bunker to house enough U.S. currency to replenish the cash supply east of the Mississippi River in the event of a catastrophic event. [4]
Dedicated on December 10, 1969, the 400 ft-long (120 m), 140,000 sq ft (13,000 m2) radiation-hardened facility was constructed of steel-reinforced concrete one ft (30 cm) thick. Lead-lined shutters could be dropped to shield the windows of the semi-recessed facility, which is covered by 2 to 4 ft (0.61 to 1.22 m) of dirt and surrounded by barbed-wire fences and a guard post. The seven computers at the facility, operated by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, were the central node for all American electronic funds transfer activities. [4]
Between 1969 and 1988, the bunker stored several billion dollars worth of U.S. currency, including a large number of $2 bills shrink-wrapped and stacked on pallets 9 ft (2.7 m) high. Following a nuclear attack, this money was to be used to replenish currency supplies east of the Mississippi River. [4]
Prior to July 1992, the bunker also served as a continuity of government facility. With a peacetime staff of 100, the site was designed to support an emergency staff of 540 for 30 days, but only 200 beds were provided in the men's and women's dormitories (to be shared on a "hot-bunk" basis by the staff working around the clock). A pre-planned menu of freeze-dried foods for the first 30 days of occupation was stored on site; private wells would provide uncontaminated water following an attack. Other noteworthy features of the facility were a cold storage area for maintaining bodies unable to be promptly buried (due to high radiation levels outside), an incinerator, indoor pistol range, and a helicopter landing pad. [4]
The facility also housed the Culpeper Switch, which was the central switching station of the Federal Reserve's Fedwire electronic funds transfer system, which at the time connected only the Fed's member banks. The Culpeper Switch also served as a data backup point for member banks east of the Mississippi River. [4]
In 1988, all money was removed from Mount Pony. The Culpeper Switch ceased operation in 1992, its functions having been decentralized to three smaller sites. In addition, its status as continuity of government site was removed. The facility was poorly maintained by a skeleton staff until 1997 when the bunker was offered for sale. With the approval of the United States Congress, it was purchased by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond via a $5.5 million grant, done on behalf of the Library of Congress. With a further $150 million from the Packard Humanities Institute and $82.1 million from Congress, the facility was transformed into the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, which opened in mid-2007. The center offered, for the first time, a single site to store all 6.3 million pieces of the library's movie, television, and sound collection.
The Packard Campus was designed to be a green building, being situated mostly underground and topped with sod roofs. It was designed to have minimal visual impact on the Virginia countryside by blending into the existing landscape. From the northwest, only a semi-circular terraced arcade appears in the hill to allow natural light into the administrative and work areas. Additionally, the site also included the largest private sector re-forestation effort on the Eastern Seaboard, amassing over 9,000 tree saplings and nearly 200,000 other plantings. [5]
The underground vaults (some set to temperatures below freezing) contain nearly 90 mi (140 km) of shelving, not including 124 nitrate film vaults: [6] the largest nitrate film storage complex in the Western hemisphere. The campus's data center is the first archive to preserve digital content at the petabyte (1 million gigabyte) level. [5]
The campus also contains a 206-seat theater capable of projecting both film and modern digital cinema and which features a digital organ that rises from under the stage to accompany silent film screenings. [5] The Packard Campus currently holds semi-weekly screenings of films of cultural significance in its reproduction Art Deco theater according to this schedule.
Every summer prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Packard Campus hosted the Mostly Lost identification workshop for silent and sound films. Unidentified or misidentified silent films and film clips were screened for registered attendees, who collectively attempted to identify the unknown works. [7] The films screened were not only from the Library of Congress's collections, but also from other participating film archives, which have included the George Eastman House, the UCLA Film & Television Archive, the EYE Film Institute of the Netherlands, the University of Southern California's Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive, the Lobster Film Archive, and the Newsfilm Library at the University of South Carolina. [8] Screenings were held in the Packard Campus Theater.
The Packard Campus hosts an annual open house on the Columbus Day federal holiday, offering the general public the opportunity to tour the facility and attend presentations by campus staff about the work they do for the Library of Congress and the audio-visual collections they maintain in the facility. [9]
Culpeper is an incorporated town in Culpeper County, Virginia, United States. The population was 20,062 at the 2020 census, up from 16,379 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Culpeper County.
James Hadley Billington was an American academic and author who taught history at Harvard and Princeton before serving for 42 years as CEO of four federal cultural institutions. He served as the 13th Librarian of Congress after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, and his appointment was approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate. He retired as Librarian on September 30, 2015.
The Diefenbunker, formerly known by its military designation, Canadian Forces Station Carp (CFS Carp), is a large underground four-storey reinforced concrete bunker and nuclear fallout shelter located in the rural area of Carp, Ontario approximately 30 km (19 mi) west of downtown Ottawa. Between 1957 and 1961, during the Cold War the Government of Canada led by then Prime Minister John Diefenbaker authorized the Diefenbunker to be designed and built as the Central Emergency Government Headquarters (CEGHQ Carp) in an attempt to ensure the continuity of government subsequent to a nuclear weapons attack by the Soviet Union. In 1994, CFS Carp was decommissioned and closed.
The Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) is a non-profit foundation, established in 1987, and located in Los Altos, California, which funds projects in a wide range of conservation concerns in the fields of archaeology, music, film preservation, and historic conservation, plus Greek epigraphy, with an aim to create tools for basic research in the Humanities.
Audio restoration is the process of removing imperfections from sound recordings. Audio restoration can be performed directly on the recording medium, or on a digital representation of the recording using a computer. Record restoration is a particular form of audio restoration that seeks to repair the sound of damaged gramophone records.
David Woodley Packard is an American former professor and philanthropist; he is the son of Hewlett-Packard co-founder David Packard. A former HP board member (1987–1999), David is best known for his opposition to the HP-Compaq merger and his support for classical studies, especially the digitization of classics research. He has made significant contribution to the study of the language and the sign repertory of the Minoan Linear A script. Packard currently serves as president of the Packard Humanities Institute.
The Cold War Museum (Moscow) or Bunker GO-42, also known as "facility-02" (1947), CHZ-293 (1951), CHZ-572 (1953), and GO-42 (from 1980), and now Exhibition Complex Bunker-42, is a once-secret military complex, bunker, communication center in Moscow, Russia, near the underground Moscow Metro station Taganskaya. It has an area of 7,000 square metres (75,000 sq ft) and is situated at a depth of 65 metres (213 ft) below ground.
The Denver Federal Center, in Lakewood, Colorado, is part of the General Services Administration and is home to about 6,200 employees of agencies of the federal government of the United States. The Center encompasses an area of about 670 acres (2.7 km2) and has 90 buildings with over 4,000,000 square feet (400,000 m2) of office, warehouse, lab and special use space. There are 28 different Federal agencies on-site, making it the largest concentration of Federal agencies outside of Washington, D.C.
The National Program Office (NPO) was an office of the United States Government, established to ensure continuity of government in the event of a national disaster. The NPO was established by a secret executive order signed on 14 September 1982 by President Ronald Reagan during the Cold War in preparation for a nuclear war, presumably with the Soviet Union.
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., that serves as the library and research service of the U.S. Congress and the de facto national library of the United States. Founded in 1800, the library is the United States's oldest federal cultural institution. The library is housed in three elaborate buildings on Capitol Hill. It also maintains a conservation center in Culpeper, Virginia. The library's functions are overseen by the Librarian of Congress, and its buildings are maintained by the Architect of the Capitol. The Library of Congress is one of the largest libraries in the world. Its collections contain approximately 173 million items, and it has more than 3,000 employees. Its collections are "universal, not limited by subject, format, or national boundary, and include research materials from all parts of the world and in more than 470 languages".
Northeast Historic Film (NHF) is a regional moving image archive located in Bucksport, Maine. It is a tax-exempt nonprofit organization dedicated to collecting, preserving and sharing film and video related to the people of Northern New England.
Murder at Midnight is a 1931 American pre-Code murder mystery whodunnit directed by Frank R. Strayer.
These Amazing Shadows is a 2011 documentary film which tells the history and importance of the National Film Registry, a roll call of American cinema treasures that reflects the diversity of film, and indeed the American experience itself.
Missile Master was a US Army surface-to-air missile control complex/facility. It controlled Project Nike missiles. Virtually all Missile Masters had a bunker housing the Martin AN/FSG-1 Antiaircraft Defense System, as well as additional structures for "an AN/FPS-33 defense acquisition radar (DAR) or similar radar, two height-finder radars," and identification friend or foe secondary radar. The radars, along with Automated Data Links (ADL) from remote Nike firing units, provided data into the AN/FSG-1 tracking subsystem with the DAR providing surveillance coverage to about 200 mi (320 km).
DPR Construction is a commercial general contractor and construction management firm based in Redwood City, California. The privately-held, employee-owned company has 30 offices throughout the United States and specializes in projects for technology, life sciences, healthcare, higher education and commercial office markets. Its international offices were located in Europe and Asia.
The Straight Road is a 1914 American drama silent film based upon the play by Clyde Fitch, directed by Allan Dwan, and starring Gladys Hanson, William Russell, Iva Shepard, Arthur Hoops and Lorraine Huling. It was released on November 12, 1914, by Paramount Pictures.
Kilmeny is a surviving 1915 American comedy silent film directed by Oscar Apfel and written by Louise B. Stanwood. The film stars Lenore Ulric, William Desmond, Doris Baker, Herbert Standing, Howard Davies and Gordon Griffith. The film was released July 22, 1915, by Paramount Pictures.
The Woman God Changed is a 1921 American silent drama film directed by Robert G. Vignola and written by Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne and Doty Hobart. The film stars Seena Owen, E.K. Lincoln, Henry Sedley, Lillian Walker, H. Cooper Cliffe and Paul Nicholson. The film was released on July 3, 1921, by Paramount Pictures.
A Yankee Go-Getter is a 1921 American silent drama film directed by Duke Worne and starring Neva Gerber.
The Prairie King is a 1927 American silent Western film directed by B. Reeves Eason and starring Hoot Gibson. It was produced and distributed by Universal Pictures.
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