[Above] The Art Deco Mount Pony Theater operated by the Library of Congress

Library of Congress
Mount Pony Culpeper Virginia Movie Theater

With archive materials housed in five separate location,the audio-visual department of the Library of Congress has now unified their collection in Culpeper, Virginia, approximately 70 miles to the west of Washington DC. Inheriting a radiation hardened facility at Mount Pony from its former owners the Federal Reserve Board, the location has been redesigned and rebuilt with a state of the art Art-Deco 200-seat movie theater.

Originally built in 1969 to act as an emergency headquarters and a high-security currency warehouse, the facility features a 400 foot long steel reinforced bunker with 30-centimeter thicks walls and lead-lined shutters for its windows. In 1997 the United States Congress approved the transfer to the Library of Congress, and funded by a private foundation, has set up the Packard Campus of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, featuring 90 miles of shelving for the extensive collection of film elements, video tape, photographs, recordings and odds-and-ends chronicling the film and recording arts in America.

The collection is home to more than 1.1 million film, television, and video items, and 3.5 million audio recordings. Motion pictures date from the 1890s, and audio recordings date back 110 years.

The Library of Congress runs two movie theatres:
The Mary Pickford Theatre on the 3rd floor of the Madison Building in Washington DC (schedule online)
The Mount Pony Movie Theater near Culpeper, Virginia (schedule online)

Library of Congress Online A/V Conservation Home Page