The National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC) is a branch of the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
devoted to preserving the United States' audio-visual history. It includes the Packard Campus (PCAVC), opened in 2007 to store the then entire 6.3 million piece collection of the Library's movie, television, and sound artifacts, the Center's largest facility; the Library's Motion Picture and Television Division and Recorded Sound Division reference centers on
Capitol Hill
Capitol Hill is a neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., neighborhood in Washington, D.C., located in both the Northeast, Washington, D.C., Northeast and Southeast, Washington, D.C., Southeast quadrants. It is bounded by 14th Street SE & NE, F S ...
; the
Mary Pickford Theater; and any other Library of Congress audio-visual storage facilities that remain outside the Packard Campus audiovisual archive located inside Mount Pony in
Culpeper,
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...
.
Packard Campus establishment
From 1969 to 1988, the original campus was a high-security storage facility operated by the
Federal Reserve Board, referred to colloquially as "Mt. Pony". With the approval of the
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...
in 1997, it was purchased by the
David and Lucile Packard Foundation
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation is a private foundation that provides grants to not-for-profit organizations. It was created in 1964 by David Packard (co-founder of HP) and his wife Lucile Salter Packard. Following David Packard's dea ...
from the
Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond is the headquarters of the Fifth District of the Federal Reserve located in Richmond, Virginia. It covers the District of Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and most of West Virgini ...
via a $5.5 million grant, done on behalf of the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
. With a further $150 million from the
Packard Humanities Institute
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 $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.
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
Capitol Hill is a neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., neighborhood in Washington, D.C., located in both the Northeast, Washington, D.C., Northeast and Southeast, Washington, D.C., Southeast quadrants. It is bounded by 14th Street SE & NE, F S ...
, 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'', 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.
Federal Reserve bunker
With
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
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 protect the computer bank responsible for electronic funds transfers between member banks of the Federal Reserve (the core of a transfer system then called the Federal Reserve Wire Network, today known as
Fedwire
Fedwire (formerly known as the Federal Reserve Wire Network) is a real-time gross settlement funds transfer system operated by the United States Federal Reserve Banks that allows financial institutions to electronically transfer funds between its ...
), which moved some $30 trillion dollars a year in 1975 through the so-called "Culpepper Switch" located at Mt. Pony. It also served as a data backup point for member banks east of the Mississippi River.
[McCamley, N.J. ''Cold War Secret Nuclear Bunkers''. Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2002.]
Between 1969 and 1988 the facilty housed enough
U.S. currency (shrink-wrapped and stacked on pallets high) to replenish the cash supply east of the
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the main stem, primary river of the largest drainage basin in the United States. It is the second-longest river in the United States, behind only the Missouri River, Missouri. From its traditional source of Lake Ita ...
in the event of a catastrophic event.
Dedicated on December 10, 1969, the , radiation-hardened facility was constructed of steel-reinforced concrete thick. Lead-lined shutters could be dropped to shield the windows of the semi-recessed facility, which is covered by of dirt and surrounded by barbed-wire fences and a guard post.
Prior to July 1992, the bunker also served as a physical
continuity of government
Continuity of government (COG) is the principle of establishing defined procedures that allow a government to continue its essential operations in case of a catastrophic event such as nuclear war.
Continuity of government was developed by the Br ...
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.
Post-Cold War
In 1988, all currency 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
The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...
, it was purchased by the
David and Lucile Packard Foundation
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation is a private foundation that provides grants to not-for-profit organizations. It was created in 1964 by David Packard (co-founder of HP) and his wife Lucile Salter Packard. Following David Packard's dea ...
from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond via a $5.5 million grant, done on behalf of the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
. With a further $150 million from the
Packard Humanities Institute
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 $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.
Campus architecture
The Packard Campus was designed exploit the original facility's mostly underground,
sod-roofed construction - which so insulated it from the elements that no heating system was required: residual heat from the building's numerous computers was used to maintain warmth in cool seasons, and air-conditioning was required in warm (to keep the computers cool first, and staff second). This was renovated and expanded along the principles of
green building
Green building (also known as green construction, sustainable building, or eco-friendly building) refers to both a structure and the application of processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building's li ...
, with a much larger exposed structure 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, representing over 9,000 tree saplings and nearly 200,000 other plantings.

The underground vaults (some set to temperatures below freezing) contain nearly of shelving, not including 124
nitrate film
Nitrocellulose (also known as cellulose nitrate, flash paper, flash cotton, guncotton, pyroxylin and flash string, depending on form) is a highly flammable compound formed by nitration, nitrating cellulose through exposure to a mixture of nitri ...
vaults: the largest nitrate film storage complex in the
Western hemisphere
The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the 180th meridian.- The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Geopolitically, ...
. The campus's data center is the first archive to preserve digital content at the
petabyte
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...
(1 million
gigabyte
The gigabyte () is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The SI prefix, prefix ''giga-, giga'' means 109 in the International System of Units (SI). Therefore, one gigabyte is one billion bytes. The unit symbol for the gigabyte i ...
) level.
The campus also contains a 206-seat theater capable of projecting both film and modern digital cinema and which features a digital
organ
Organ and organs may refer to:
Biology
* Organ (biology), a group of tissues organized to serve a common function
* Organ system, a collection of organs that function together to carry out specific functions within the body.
Musical instruments
...
that rises from under the stage to accompany
silent film
A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, w ...
screenings.
The Packard Campus currently holds semi-weekly screenings of films of cultural significance in its reproduction
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...
theater according t
this schedule
Events
Mostly Lost Film Identification Workshop
Every summer prior to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, 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. 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 George Eastman Museum, also referred to as George Eastman House and the International Museum of Photography and Film, is a photography museum in Rochester, New York. Opened to the public in 1949, is the oldest museum dedicated to photography ...
, the
UCLA Film & Television Archive, the
EYE Film Institute of the
Netherlands
, Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
, 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
The University of South Carolina (USC, SC, or Carolina) is a Public university, public research university in Columbia, South Carolina, United States. Founded in 1801 as South Carolina College, It is the flagship of the University of South Car ...
. Screenings were held in the Packard Campus Theater.
Fall Open House
The Packard Campus hosts an annual open house on the
Columbus Day
Columbus Day is a national holiday in many countries of the Americas and elsewhere, and a federal holiday in the United States, which officially celebrates the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas. He went ashore at ...
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.
References
*
*
*
Further reading
*McCamley, N.J. ''Cold War Secret Nuclear Bunkers''. Pen & Sword Books Ltd, 2002.
External links
National Audio Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC) home page{{authority control
2007 establishments in Virginia
Archives in the United States
Audio engineering
Buildings and structures in Culpeper County, Virginia
Buildings of the United States government
Cold War history of the United States
Continuity of government in the United States
Disaster preparedness in the United States
Federal Reserve System
Film archives in the United States
Film preservation
Library of Congress
Nuclear bunkers in the United States
Sustainable architecture
Sustainable building
Sustainable design
Television archives in the United States
Tourist attractions in Culpeper County, Virginia
Underground construction