The library/sunroom in Jim Noble's 19th-century Minneapolis house is all about the books. Leather-bound volumes, many of them antiques that have been in his family for generations, fill floor-to-ceiling shelves that line an entire wall."It's nice to have books around. They add so much ambience," said Noble, a principal with Noble Interior Design. "I hope we never live to see the day that books are eliminated from the home."
Michael Jones also loves books. But his loft condo in Minneapolis doesn't have space for a traditional library. He still buys books but downloads a lot of his lighter reading material on his Kindle. Recently he added a custom built-in bookshelf to his living room -- mainly to display his art collection. "I was running out of wall space," he said.
The two homes illustrate the role books have traditionally played in the American home -- and the role they may play in the future, as e-readers continue to revolutionize our relationship with the printed word.
Books were once powerful symbols of knowledge, wealth and status. In the 19th century, upper-class homes often included voluminous libraries.
"Books were very expensive, and a large library was the mark of an aristocrat," said Clifford Clark, professor of history and American studies at Carleton College in Northfield.
In a well-educated man's library -- and the library was definitely a male space, according to Clark -- books were items for display as well as reading. In the early 1900s, many people furnished their libraries with the "Harvard shelf," a reference to the 5-foot bookshelf required to contain the Harvard Classics. (That 51-volume anthology of works, selected by Harvard President Charles Eliot, consisted of all the books he considered essential to the background of an educated person.)
During the bungalow era, built-in bookshelves moved into middle-class homes, Clark said, but retained their symbolism as a marker of education.
Paperback explosion