Home Libraries (Sotheby's)

byIyna Bort Caruso | 04 Aug 2017

A personal library is not just a room – it’s a realm. No other space offers as much insight into a person’s tastes and intellectual curiosity, or feels as intimate and consequential at the same time.

Such is the case in Newport, Rhode Island, where the centrepiece of a sprawling condominium is a library with vaulted cedar-shingled ceilings, cherry and mahogany millwork, as well as an imposing fireplace. Made of three units combined into one, the home is located in a former 1852 carriage house that was once part of an estate owned by John Jacob Astor. A meticulous 21st-century reimagining of the space where coachmen once met, its library looks strikingly authentic to both the building’s former self and the current owners’ personalities. “People enter the library and are just awestruck,” says Kate Kirby Greenman of Gustave White Sotheby’s International Realty in Newport. “It’s very peaceful, very beautiful, and it just takes your breath away,” she adds. Measuring 30 square feet, this cherished haven is as ideal for entertaining as it is for quiet contemplation.

Clearly, even in our digital world, the idea of a space dedicated to hardcover books remains extremely appealing. For her part, architect Susan Bower of Mitchell Wall Architecture and Design in St Louis, Missouri, loves “the way you can manipulate space with books” – use freestanding bookcases, and they become sculptures; line a room with books, and they give the impression of wallpaper, as in the majestic contemporary library of a family home in Heber City, Utah. “A library has all these ideas captured between bindings – it’s just a wonderful repository of human thought,” Bower says. It can also be an impressive reflection of your best self.