NEW BOOK: THE PRIVATE LIBRARY

At the turn of the millennium, Reid Byers, a computer systems architect, set out to build a private library at his home in Princeton, N.J. Finding few books on library architecture that were not centuries old and in a dead or mildewed language, he took the advice of a neighbor across the street, the novelist Toni Morrison.

Ms. Morrisononce famously said if there is a book you want to read and it doesn't exist, then you must write it, recalled Mr. Byers, 74, in a video chat from his current home, in Portland, Maine.

The project stretched over a generation and culminated this year in a profusely illustrated, detail-crammed, Latin-strewn and yet remarkably unstuffy book calledThe Private Library: The History of the Architecture and Furnishing of the Domestic Bookroom, published by Oak Knoll Press.

The opus arrives at an ambivalent time for book owners. As the pandemic's social and economic disruptions have nudged people into new homes, some are questioning whether it is worth dragging along their collections. Given the inflated costs of real estate and the capacity of e-readers to hold thousands of titles, maybe that precious floor and wall space could be put to other uses?

And yet there are clear benefits in a pandemic to having a private sanctuary programmed for escapism.

“The tactile connection to books and the need for places of refuge in the home, both for work and for personal well-being, have made libraries a renewed focus in residential design, said Andrew Cogar, the president of Historical Concepts, an architecture firm with offices in Atlanta and New York.

 
The quintessential family library at Lamport Hall, in Northamptonshire, England

Morgan Munsey, who sells real estate for Compass in Brooklyn and Manhattan, has seen well-groomed libraries in brownstones help spark bidding wars.

InThe Private Library, Mr. Byers goes to the heart of why physical books continue to beguile us. Individually, they are frequently useful or delightful, but it is when books are displayed en masse that they really work wonders. Covering the walls of a room, piled up to the ceiling and exuding the breath of generations, they nourish the senses, slay boredom and relieve distress.

“Entering our library should feel like easing into a hot tub, strolling into a magic store, emerging into the orchestra pit, or entering a chamber of curiosities, the club, the circus, our cabin on an outbound yacht, the house of an old friend, he writes.It is a setting forth, and it is a coming back to center.

Having begun 4,000 years ago, asstrange little rooms in modest Mesopotamian houses storing cuneiform tablets, libraries reached their Western European apotheosis by the 18th and 19th centuries as grand paneled spaces with fireplaces, ornate ceilings, built-in shelves, hard and soft chairs (for serious and relaxed reading), plush carpets, game tables, maybe a grand piano and secret doors (through which servants discreetly entered to tend fires).

To read the complete article, see:
How Many Books Does It Take to Make a Place Feel Like Home? (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/24/realestate/why-do-people-keep-books.html)

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