Time to vote on a new name for the cafe at Folger Shakespeare Library’s Great Hall in D.C. is almost up.
The home of the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, located on Capitol Hill, is asking the public to help name its new cafe by voting on one of five names before 11:59 p.m. Tuesday.
The finalists “Peaseblossom,” “Gooseberry,” “Hathaway’s,” “Prologue” and “Quill & Crumble,” were chosen from 1,750 “witty and deeply knowledgeable ideas,” according to the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Some of the rejected suggestions included “Mugbeth,” “To Tea or Not to Tea,” “Cakes and Ale” and “Taming of the Brew.”
The library building, including the yet-to-be-named cafe, at 201 East Capitol Street in Southeast is scheduled to reopen on Friday, June 21, 2024, following a $38 million renovation that began in March of 2020.
Upcoming changes include a 12,000-square-foot pavilion, a pair of new underground exhibition halls and sloping gardens with wheelchair ramps.
The original structure, designed by French American architect Paul Cret, was dedicated April 23, 1932 — what many scholars believe was Shakespeare’s birthday — and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.
Henry Folger, who became president of the Standard Oil Company in 1911, worked with his wife, Emily, to amass a large collection of Shakespeare artifacts. Toward the end of World War I, the couple began searching for a building to house their collection, and finally settled on the current location near the Library of Congress.
WTOP’s Kate Corliss contributed to this report.
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