The arrangement of objects is essential to the Wrightian expression of space. Here, the Robsjohn-Gibbings buffet that inspired much of the house is complemented by an African drum holding Sumac branches, along with a sculptural painting by Val M. Cox; color in the rug is echoed in a vintage Blenko aqua glass vase and a vase by Pittsburgh artist Drew Hine.

Dreaming not of model trains and cowboys, but rather of room dividers and recessed lighting, a boy attracted to his grandparents’ 1959 Modern home, Jerry Morosco grew up to be a Taliesin apprentice, absorbing the tenets of 20th-century design genius Frank Lloyd Wright.

Afterwards he returned to his native Pittsburgh and settled in the South Side, once a thriving neighborhood of small businesses and tidy brick row houses built for Victorian steel workers and their families. After the ’60s the old neighborhood declined, its storefronts boarded up as families relocated to the suburbs. But Jerry was aware of urban renewal and the Back to the City movement, and opened his own architecture practice in the heart of Pittsburgh, in a historic former glassworks.

Soon he noticed the abandoned frame house for sale across the street. Vacant for several years, it was uninhabitable, filled with debris, windows broken, plaster walls and ceilings collapsing, its floors riddled with gaping holes. But the price was right ($5,000) and the location perfect. Jerry’s research revealed that the house was built as a four-room farmhouse in the 1840s, then floated by barge down the Monongahela River to its present site in 1875, after a fire had opened up a lot in this block of narrow brick townhouses.

An open floorplan makes the small house seem larger. Adjoining areas are unified by white-oak woodwork and hand-stained ochre plaster. An important Klismos dining-room ensemle is a centerpiece; the needlepoint rug is by the painter Tim Van Campen, for Michaelian & Kohlberg.

Just 16′ wide and 32′ deep (with a rear “tail” that includes a 14′ kitchen, added in 1875), the house proved to be a challenge. Trained in preservation and restoration, Jerry intended to salvage as much of the original as possible. But structural analysis revealed serious rot conditions and insect infestations throughout, involving even the 1840s timber framing and sills. He experimented with cables and pulleys in an attempt to stabilize the rotting framework, but realized the structure needed replacement. A torrential rain during reframing washed out a large part of the rubble-stone basement walls, nearly collapsing both this house and the neighbor’s, just 36” away. Beyond the footprint, the turned wooden spindle separating the two windows on the front façade was the single salvageable piece.

The main design challenge—one common to narrow row houses—was how to locate the stairs and bathrooms within the constraints of a very small floor plan. (Understand that the “bathroom” was originally a backyard privy.) Jerry took advantage of every square inch of space, creating a chase that runs perpendicular to the stairs from basement to attic, to allow code-compliant space for plumbing pipes, venting, and air-conditioning ducts. It made a compact “Ozzie and Harriet” second-floor bathroom possible, in a room just 6′ 8” square.

Sources of inspiration: Mexican pewter, ginkgo leaves, and the catalog from the Guggenheim on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Having absorbed F.L. Wright’s teaching that the architect is responsible for the entire environment—architecture, landscape, and furnishings—Jerry rethought the interior of his home.

Mid-century Modern furniture by the famous decorator T. H. Robsjohn–Gibbings inspired the design and detailing of woodwork and built-in casework.

The graceful Grecian arc of the legs of a Klismos dining table and chairs inspired Jerry to use their curvilinear vocabulary as a guide for the profile of the baseboard and window and door casings.

The edges of the slab legs of a Robsjohn–Gibbings cocktail table provided the profile for the nosing of the pocket doors upstairs, while the mitered top of a sideboard, whose edges extend over the top and down the sides, was used as the profile for the vertical edges of the kitchen cabinets, making them appear to be suspended in air.

Jerry carefully drew out furniture placement for each room, incorporating both inherited pieces, such as a ca. 1940 sofa and chair set upholstered in a nubby chenille from his great-grandmother, and a leather chair from his great-grandfather’s barber shop, along with mid-century Modern masterpieces that include a ca. 1952 drop-front secretary by Suzanne Guiguichon, an important T.H. Robsjohn–Gibbings buffet, and a Klismos dining table and chairs that are the centerpiece of the open dining room.

A ca. 1960 George Nelson wall clock keeps the time above the breakfast table, lit by a prototype "Ben" series Resolute Lighting pendant designed by Douglas Varey. The custom table is set with a pair of two K65 stools by Alvar Aalto.

Following Wright’s philosophy of celebrating the honesty of materials, floors are made of natural cork, finished simply with carnauba wax (they’ve held up well for more than a decade); the custom millwork, trim, and casework are white maple finished with Danish oil and carnauba wax.

Walls and ceilings are finished in a steel-troweled veneer plaster. Jerry decided to stain the plaster with an early recipe Wright used for projects such as his Unity Temple: equal portions of oil, beeswax, turpentine, and pigment. Morosco chose an ochre yellow inspired by ginkgo trees in the yard.

He used honed slabs of Kirkstone, quarried in the Lake District in Cumbria, England, for kitchen and bath countertops and backsplashes; the matte gray-green finish complements the sunny ochre walls and golden-brown cork floors.

An essential quality of Wright’s work was his ability to manipulate space, realizing that it is greater than just the walls and roof. The idea became Jerry’s mantra as well: By using continuous and homogeneous planes and natural materials, he made the narrow house appear much larger, each area opening into the next as if one were unfolding a careful piece of origami. Choice and placement of art and objects were also considered, as if that were the home’s final “seasoning.”

Jerry Morosco strives to remain true to his Taliesin training. He shares his home with appreciative partner Paul Ford and their Border collie-mix, Saverio.

Meet the Architect

Some people (like Jerry Morosco) know what they want to do from an early age. The Pittsburgh-based architect, who specializes in restoration, had no doubt that he’d be an architect. His grandparents’ 1959 house was the best of the period: open floor plan, blond oak woodwork, shuffleboard linoleum in the rec room. He loved it. With a bachelor’s degree under his belt, Jerry entered an apprenticeship at Taliesin, spending the next five years absorbing the genius of 20th-century architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Then Jerry went back to Pittsburgh to live and work.

“My appreciation for the value of a beautiful environment came to me by way of direct personal experience at Taliesin,” Morosco says. “I lived for five years in an incredibly rich [design] environment, and I learned my profession within the intentional community that is the Taliesin fellowship. It is sustained upon the idea that we should always strive to create beauty if we were to remain true to our profession as architects.”

Click here to visit his website.

Note how the many colors in ‘Fairyland’ (Trustworth Studios) blend to become an analogous and near-neutral background for warm oak tones and the brilliant green of the lantern. “White” woodwork, actually a coffee-and-cream color, is a brightening frame.

Taking our cue from a reader question about how to choose trim color that “goes with” the wallpaper, we spoke to wallpaper experts, colorists, and designers. I’ve been surprised at how much interest there is in the topic, and how much effusive advice was offered.

It’s not a new dilemma. William Morris (who liked to give advice on this and many other topics) was a strong advocate for woodwork that does not match the wallpaper. (He often suggested that trim be painted “a quiet green.”) He felt contrast was critical: “Rooms with wood-work and walls of equal tone are sometimes very tame, and even dull.” More recently, artist and muralist C.J. Hurley echoed Morris’s sentiments, explaining that the best interiors do not have wallpapers and woodwork too “safely” coordinated. Think of your room as a musical composition, C.J. suggests—one that has a careful combination of notes arranged harmonically, but with enough dissonance to make it compelling.

Here’s an example. If you have a tripartite wall with wallpaper in the frieze (top), don’t necessarily use paint in similar colors for the fill (center) and dado (bottom). Be adventuresome! If the frieze is predominantly green, how about the wall fill in an earthy yellow and the dado below in a richer yellow-brown that leans toward red? Create interest and a sense of movement, not flatness. A simpler bipartite Arts & Crafts scheme might have a frieze in naturalistic blue tones, with a russet orange-brown or silver-tone gray below, varied in tone (light or dark) between frieze and wall for visual relief and balance.

Color and pattern in the Victorian era were layered together for a textured palette that nonetheless was balanced to the eye, says 19th-century wallpaper guru John Burrows. Tastemakers didn’t shy away from strong and contrasting color schemes, “scientifically” basing their choices on the color wheel. Analogous colors (say, amethyst purple and sapphire blue) or contrasting ones (hunter green and madder red) could be “pleasingly combined.”

C.J. Hurley created a contrasting scheme with a Swedish blue-green paper accented with pink irises and yellow cartouches against a handpainted frieze. The ivory trim creates harmony. Note the subtle coordination of the window shade.

Tertiary colors produced softer, more subtle tones and were popular, such as an olive-green paper accented with burgundy and gold; perhaps a dash of peacock blue would highlight the terra cotta on woodwork and trim.

For a more sophisticated approach, Burrows advises using a paper’s neutral ground—such as “drab” (a warm gray), tan, or putty—as the base of the painted walls or woodwork, then adding one or two tertiary accents as narrow bands or stripes.

Maryellen Mantyla of California Paints reminds us that neutrals carry undertones of yellow, blue, green, or red, something to consider when deciding on complementary or harmonious colors.

Christopher Dresser’s 1859 botany textbook was titled Unity in Variety, which suggests a design concept as applicable to interiors today. Wayne Mason of Mason & Wolf Wallpapers (specialists in artistic period papers of the late 19th century and Arts & Crafts era) likes to keep Dresser’s philosophy in mind when combining wallpaper and paints, interpreting their unity in terms of music. That is, if the same red is repeated throughout the room, it’s like hitting the same key on the piano over and over.

Farrow & Ball’s ‘Rectory Red’ is echoed in the firm’s ‘St. Antoine Damask’ wallpaper.

Variation produced by combining brick red with burgundy and soft rose creates the equivalent of a musical chord. Mason often uses stenciling and painted bands of color to unify and define busy paper patterns on both walls and ceilings. For example, the transition between a ceiling painted a light sky blue and the wallpaper border surrounding it may be highlighted with a band of gold stenciling, carrying the pattern onto the painted portion of the ceiling as well as softening the hard edges of the wallpaper border.

Architectural elements are unified with paint and pattern as well.  Mason painted the plaster corbel of an archway in his own bedroom with soft yellow, red, green, and pink, the palette drawn from the Morris ‘Fruit’ paper applied to the walls of the room. Darker shades of these colors were then repeated on the picture molding to better define the woodwork and make it appear more substantial. Finally, a band of salmon paint was used to separate the ceiling paper from the wallpaper and provide a visual break between the busy patterns.

Trick of the Trade

John Burrows suggests using lining paper on walls, then painting trim before hanging the wallpaper. Allow the paint to overlap slightly onto the liner so that minor gaps in the wallpaper will not be evident. Hang wallpaper last. This sequence also avoids paint splatters on the paper.

As for painting plaster ceiling medallions, Heather Cole of Bradbury & Bradbury Wallpapers says to avoid the “paint-by-number look” by using only one color, perhaps with tonal variation or gilded highlights. She suggests glazing to add softness and glow.

The ‘Silvergate’ damask paper from Farrow & Ball repeats swirls of classical decoration in the mantel; the look is serene rather than busy because of the neutral colors and similar tones.

“I believe in plenty of optimism and white paint,” said famed decorator Elsie de Wolfe as the Colonial Revival took hold.

Despite her famously successful use of white paint, it takes skill to use white, warns David Berman of Trustworth Studios. Berman specializes in design (including wallpapers) based on the work of English Arts & Crafts designer CFA Voysey, who favored light-toned, airy interiors with woodwork either left natural or painted white.

But “white” is relative. Berman favors Benjamin Moore’s ‘White Coffee’ as a trim color, which is closer to a beige and has the tonality to complement tertiary colors. He claims that a common mistake is trying to “brighten” a room with white paint, which flattens the room and overwhelms its other elements.

Berman advises that color be chosen, too, according to the light in the room, and particularly whether the room is to be used primarily in daylight or under artificial illumination. The light source dramatically alters how paint and wallpaper colors are perceived.

Woodwork in a room acts as the frame for its walls, says nationally recognized designer Barry Dixon. He used Morris’s ‘Apple’ wallpaper from Sanderson in a custom colorway for his own kitchen and adjoining breakfast nook, creating an autumn palette.

Benjamin Moore’s ‘Startling Orange’ joins three colors by Farrow & Ball:  ‘Cream,’ the warm-brown ‘Wainscot,’ and ‘India Yellow’ (a color that in the 18th century was made from the bright-yellow urine of cows fed mango leaves). Inspired by Lutyens’s Castle Drogo in England, Dixon limed and waxed the quarter-sawn oak banquette to create a quiet frame for the richly colored Morris wallpaper.

Striping pulls colors together and offers relief in this installation of Bradbury wall and ceiling papers.

Finally, it’s important to consider how different rooms relate, says designer Leta Austin Foster, who works with her daughter, Sallie Giordano. Known for their comfortable interiors for historic homes, they like to create an enfilade of rooms, with enticement room to room, and often combining wallpaper with painted woodwork in complementary tones.

Farrow & Ball’s pale, sky-blue ‘Borrowed Light’ works well with period papers in creams, whites, and chocolates. Another suggestion from the pair: paint baseboards black or marbleize them (an English approach) to hide scuff marks and dirt.

Flat panel radiators like these from Runtal North America tuck almost out of sight under a shelf along a wall. Peter Vanderwarker photo

The recession and the energy crunch are bringing about innovations in the way Americans heat their homes.

Thanks to technical advances that make them easier to install, radiant heating systems are an increasingly popular choice for retrofits in existing—that is, old—houses.

Solar is also making a comeback (not surprising, since the heat source is free!) despite the aesthetic problem of what to do about those intrusive, high-tech panels. And several companies are introducing new ways to exploit heat sources already in the home.

Radiant heat isn’t really a new technology: old-fashioned steam or hot-water radiators fueled by boilers produce radiant heat. It’s how the heat is delivered that’s different: under-the-floor hot-water tubing systems produce even heat that rises through and warms the air without the intrusion of radiators. There are better, less bulky radiators, too: While you can still get traditional-looking units (some with less pronounced profiles for a sleeker look) there are also low-profile, flat-panel radiator fins that install almost anywhere, in curved spaces, along a stair railing, even under a kitchen island. If you’re looking for an energy boost for an existing steam or radiant system, you may be able to give it a “solar assist” by tying the boiler into energy produced by solar panels on the roof.

Masonry heaters, like this one from M. Teixeira Soapstone, store and release energy slowly for even, radiant heat.

Masonry fireplaces and wood stoves, clad in soapstone or another conductive material, are another form of radiant heat. These behemoths not only take center stage in your home, but can even heat the entire house. Because they are so massive (M. Teixeira’s wood stoves contain 1,700 pounds of soapstone), they store heat and release it slowly over a period of up to 24 hours, making them highly fuel-efficient. (The stone helps regulate temperatures in summer, too.)

Another potential energy source that can help heat your house is an on-demand (tankless) water heater. Rinnai has just introduced a system that marries the tankless heater with a hydronic air handler to gently heat the air in a home. The air handler does not require venting, and the company claims the system is less dry than forced-air systems.

Heatizon's ZMesh installs safely outdoors and melts snow quickly on driveways.

Electric radiant systems have been tweaked so much that they can go almost anywhere. Made of easy-to-lay mesh embedded with a heating element in the form of a thin wire, these systems fit under almost any kind of floor.

A mere 1⁄16″ thick, Heatizon’s ZMesh goes indoors and out, installing under driveways to speed snow melt, or under the roof to prevent icicle build up and ice dams. The system adjusts with the touch of a thermostat.

Depending on the orientation and angle of your roof, you may be able to hide solar panels in plain sight. Photo courtesy of Spring Lake Inn

Solar-panel technology has improved, too. While solar panels do have to be placed so they’re in sunlight for several hours a day, it’s not always necessary to put them on the house—they can be located on a garage or another building, or mounted on the ground. Depending on the angle of your roof (or if you are fortunate enough to have shed roofs with the proper solar orientation), you may be able to install the panels less obtrusively. The owner of the historic Spring Lake Inn in Spring Lake, New Jersey, hid solar panels in plain sight by installing them on the sloping roof of a wrap-around veranda.

Developed by Drexel Metals for its standing-seam roofs, solar film is far less obtrusive than typical solar panels.

There’s also hope on the aesthetics front: Drexel Metals has come up with a solar laminate in the form of a thin film that coats a portion of its standing-seam roofing. The peel-and-stick adhesive can withstand wind loads up to 160 miles per hour. Using one of oldest roofing materials available, the look is no more intrusive than an ice dam barrier. Now that’s progress.

Resources

For a list of heating and cooling suppliers, visit Heating & Cooling in the Products & Services Directory.

The 1955 Usonian-type house has typical cedar board-and-batten walls. Overhanging eaves reiterate the shadow box formation of the stacked bedroom windows and hall skylight.

Wright built his first Usonian dwelling in 1936. Purportedly derived from the initials for United States Of North America, Usonian meant a small yet spacious, light-filled house targeted specifically for the middle class. The type was to offer a sense of freedom concurrent with modern American life, and featured open floor plans, affordable materials, simple construction, and fewer personal belongings (i.e., clutter).

The idea was not quick to catch on. When Frank Lloyd Wright himself was asked to design seven small homes for a 1939 co-op housing project, proposed by professors at what is now Michigan State University in Lansing, the FHA denied the group a bank loan. The reason cited: Wright’s “unusual design.”

A similar criticism was communicated to Lillian and Bill Durig in the mid-1950s, when they began to build a 1,960-square-foot, Usonian-type house on a lot in Portland, Oregon. The lot was surrounded by orchards and afforded views of Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens.

The horizontal, inverted board-and-batten paneling and cantilevered shelves are classic Usonian elements, as is the display of Asian pieces.

Forward 50 years: last spring, Lillian played host to more than 200 visitors from the Architectural Heritage Center’s annual old-house kitchen tour, many of whom were young—and enthralled by the enduring quality of the Usonian design. The birch kitchen still functions, complete with floating cabinets and a pull-out breakfast bar; its original lighting still looks up to date. They voted the house “Best Design” in an informal survey.

“The young people were particularly intrigued by the construction of the cantilevered hearth,” says Lillian, who notes that the concrete has darkened over the years. She sealed the patina with vinyl-floor wax.

Visitors also remarked about the beautiful, vertical- grain fir paneling, which Lillian and her husband were able to handpick from a local lumberyard. “Bill was an engineer,” says Lillian, “and he was very particular about the quality of materials we used.”

The kitchen was chosen for the old-house tour for its authenticity. Only the flooring, appliances, and Formica countertops have been replaced since 1955. Birch cabinets designed for the open plan allow the cook to be part of activities in the dining room and on the patio.

Furnishings include comfortable Modern pieces and several with Asian influence, as with the coffee table. Lillian recalls that her husband Bill hated moving the heavy piece out of the way of the Murphy bed in their first apartment, and vowed to build a house around it--which they did. (Artwork by Harold Thomas-Sims)

The house is constructed around a central masonry core, which is broken up by the use of flat planes, grids, and a curtain wall that acts as a “pause” between the living area and the kitchen. These houses make a strong statement, although they were designed as simple and affordable single-family residences.

Bathed in light from an innovative skylight, the central hallway provides easy access to the kitchen, bedrooms, den, and lower level. Lillian reminds us that, at the time the house was built, “skylights were unknown and basements hidden behind closed doors.”

Corner blocks for window and door trim were reproduced by Rain Shadow Woodworks in Port Townsend.

Restoration was in store for most of this 1890 Victorian house. The current owners did not, however, appreciate the late-1970s kitchen, nor its entry through a cramped back hall broken by too many doors. After years spent searching for an architect who was “patient” and who would understand the needs of the house, they found Tom Nychay of the Seattle firm Sortun-Vos.

Decision: renovate the sunny south side of the house to accommodate a family-friendly kitchen.

Retaining an existing closet and turning an awkward bathroom into the butler’s pantry, Nychay reconfigured the space to include a mudroom, smaller powder room, food pantry, and dining area. A bump-out addition provided extra room for the functional part of the kitchen.

The reconfigured and enlarged space offers this large family-style kitchen for cooking and eating-in, as well pantries and a powder room, with access to the patio and rear entryway.

The architect responded to the owner’s request to respect her belief in the principles of feng shui. Thus, for example, all cabinet and countertop corners are softly rounded, and the powder room has a pocket door that can be kept closed, because it is so near the back door.

The kitchen side of the house has become the everyday entry from the patio. A mudroom (with a practical slate floor, built-in bench, and coat hooks) allows a transition to the kitchen. Hidden (and very practical) details include a cat door and roll-out tray for kitty litter.

Neatly tucked between refrigerator and sink, a food pantry hides behind a narrow door with chalkboard paint that carries a perennial shopping list.

The bright new kitchen feels open and modern, while picking up elements from the rest of the house. Handsome moldings and sash, window trim with corner blocks, and period doors reproduce originals. Colors were chosen to reflect the sky, the grass, and the Madrona trees just outside.

A new stained and leaded glass panel in an interior door, stunningly lit from behind, was designed by artist Rachel Gaspers to blend with stained glass in the house. It suggests a curtain bound in the center.

The owner says she loves the new layout, not to mention the safe induction cooktop and the comfortable cork flooring. “There were no weak links in this project,” she says; “everyone was skilled and ethical, with integrity and a determination to do great work.”

Sources

Contractor Pete Raab, Dream City Homes, Quilcene, WA
Windows Marvin Windows & Doors
Millwork Steven Habersetzer Fine Woodwork, Port Townsend, WA
Cork floor Vida cork tile in ‘Lisbon’ with 3×3 ‘Lisbon Chocolate Drops’ accents
Countertops Caesarstone in ‘Lagos Blue’
Backplash Sandhill glass tiles, 3×6 #4080 matte
Mudroom sink Cast concrete by Concreate
Stained glass Rachel Gaspers, Port Townsend, WA
Lighting San Marco pendants from Oggetti Luce
Paint colors Benjamin Moore Historic Color Collection: kitchen cabinets HC 31; mudroom walls HC-25; cabinets, sash & doors HC-32; ceiling HC-142

A bookstand is the sine qua non for a library, as with this elaborate, bejeweled and gilded metal stand ca. 1880, which displays an equally ornate volume on the mysteries of Egypt, and sits appropriately in an early-20th-century Turkish room. (Photo: William Wright)

With a Cambridge accent, please: “Won’t you join me in the library?” As old-house dwellers, we dream of that line; that one’s home should offer a chamber devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and intellectual delight sounds so nice, much better than “Let’s go in the den where I have paperbacks stuffed into some IKEA bookcases” (or “Let’s go in the den and watch ‘Survivor’”). Bookshelves a library do not make. A home library references the past as much as it does literature.

Functionally, the existence of a library is often rationalized as a home office. But today an office requires nothing more than a laptop, a cell phone, and a file cabinet. A library is more than this! Technology has reduced the basic requirements of an office, but a library begs for space: for books, for furniture, for globes and maps and collections and decoration. A library expresses our love of history.

With their beautiful bindings, old books are themselves objets d’art. Two 19th-century volumes hold a ca. 1880 Linthorpe teacup on a button-tufted Aesthetic chaise. (Photo: William Wright)

Within the gossamer haze of nostalgia, the library has become a repository for our collections of arcane clutter. In fact, nowhere in our homes is such an expanse of clutter (or collections, the more positive euphemism) accepted; it is here that we proudly site our prized, ebonized Eastlake easels holding gilt-framed chromolithographs. (If said objet were plunked down in the great room or foyer, the pitter-patter of little hooves would be a harbinger of glass and gesso crashing to the floor.)

Here we have found a shelter for our knick-knacks and accoutrements that perhaps would be out of place elsewhere in the house: the globes (even the new ones out of date), the cigar-holders (so politically incorrect), the stereoscope and its attendant cards (yes, children, our lives are dull). Add such things as bookstands, bookends, and rolling ladders, to say nothing of the exquisitely bound books themselves, and we can transport ourselves to an Edwardian fantasy removed from the rush of the present.

Books reside in bookcases (with Gothic cornice ornament) and in display cases in this home library in Great Britain. (Photo: Huntley Hedworth)

This is truly the allure of a library. It graciously accepts our quirks and passions and allows them to reside in peace—away from the plasma-screen television with surround-sound and the faux restaurant range. One would think that the digital age has made the library obsolete, and perhaps it has from a technological point of view. But that’s my point: This room stands as a defiant symbol against technology and progress. It’s a place for quiet reflection and the appreciation of refinement.

Long the refuge of the male, the library still smacks of masculinity, not so much in the gender of its occupants or their then-forbidden predilection for tobacco and liquor, but in the dark robustness of its furnishings. The heavier furniture associated with the room’s purpose contributes to this; bookcases must be substantial to support the weight of their volumes, and thus, stylistically, the desks, chairs, and tables follow suit. In free association, one seldom pairs the words “library” with “delicate” or “frilly”; here, even ornamental excess tends towards the talon, the column, and taxidermy.

In a turn-of-the-century Shingle/Colonial Revival house, the master’s library has an old English feel and is crammed with paintings, collections, maritime memorabilia, a rifle—and books. (Photo: Eric Roth)

Inspired by the Modern Gothic furniture of Kimball & Cabus, this bookcase was built into a miniscule New York City apartment to create an English Aesthetic library. It’s made of oak and outfitted with all of the Gothic bells and whistles: a shingled roof (which lifts up for much-appreciated storage), ornate nickel-plated strapwork, and Pugin tiles set into the cabinet doors. (Photo: William Wright)

Indeed, that other iconic masculine furnishing, the billiard table, more often than not is found amongst the stacks, for few of us are fortunate enough to have two discrete rooms devoted to such pursuits. The days of “no girls allowed” have long since passed, and all are welcome. Any suggestion that the ladies traipse off to the music room as the gents slink into the library now seems laughable.

The residential library may be an anachronism, but we folks see it as a purposeful acknowledgement of the social mores and functions of an era long since past. More than any other room, it is a time machine: our dining rooms and parlors can be furnished entirely with antiques, but it is only in the hushed reverence of the library that the ghosts of the past reside. We build our altars to the past, sometimes with a nod, other times with a full-on embrace, but never so much as in the library.

Thanks to Brian Coleman for sharing his collections and his New York apartment library.