Biography | Lionel Richie — The Hall Where the Library Handed Him the Gershwin Prize

The Library of Congress does not give this prize in its own reading rooms.

On 9 March 2022 it handed Lionel Richie the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in DAR Constitution Hall, at 1776 D Street NW, a block from the Ellipse.

John Russell Pope designed the Alabama-limestone hall for the Daughters of the American Revolution. It opened in 1929 and is a National Historic Landmark.

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden presented the prize, named for George and Ira Gershwin and reserved for a living writer's body of popular song.

Anthony Anderson hosted. Gloria Estefan opened with Dancing on the Ceiling. Chris Stapleton, Luke Bryan, Boyz II Men, Andra Day, Miguel, and Yolanda Adams took other titles from the Commodores years and the solo run.

Richie closed the night himself. Shawn Miller of the Library made the cover portrait that evening, in the hall, under federal work-for-hire. It is public domain.

Two nights earlier, on 7 March, Richie had sat with Hayden at the Library for a public conversation streamed on the Library's own channel.

PBS broadcast the concert on 17 May 2022.

The prize sits after the Kennedy Center Honors of 2017 and before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony later that same year, which was staged in Los Angeles rather than Cleveland.

The hall is a working concert room. A visitor walks in off D Street, not into a museum case.

Photo: Shawn Miller, Library of Congress, CC0, 9 March 2022, via Wikimedia Commons. Hall exterior: CC BY and CC BY-SA views of DAR Constitution Hall, via Wikimedia Commons.