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Dream Library

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Today I bring you a house listing with a beautiful library.

“A stylish Alamo Heights home recently listed for $1.1 million has the goods to be the ultimate reader’s retreat.”

Okay, so $1.1 million is too rich for my blood and I am not a huge fan of living in San Antonio. No offense to the city, but it’s even further south and hotter than where we are now. But look at that library.

Sigh. So many books.

I always wanted to live in a house with one of these libraries, where the shelves reach all the way to the ceiling. I watched a Chinese drama one time, I think it was called Love Me If You Dare, which sounds like a romance, but it was 70% serial killer and police consultant solving murder cases. It had my dream house mansion in it, with this enormous library. The San Antonio house has those same vibes.

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Comments

    • Yes! I have a think for round doors and oval windows etc, I think it’s because I’m part of the Hobbit generation 😀

    • Today is National Hobbit Day according to my local news! I agree with you about the wooden door. It is perfect for the room!

  3. Thank- you for sharing, it’s beautiful! So many unique features and I love the doors! I wonder if it has one of those sliding ladders you see in old movies. The ones that let you access your many books! Have a wonderful weekend and be sure to take some time for you.

    • I didn’t see any indication of said ladder so I can’t help but speculate the books are there to be admired rather than actually read. Which is rather sad, form without function so to speak.

        • Thank-you, I wonder if it expands. I didn’t notice it until you pointed it out. It seems it would be awkward to use. I looked at the link to the house. I’m impressed by the crazy quilt in one of the bedrooms and puzzled by the toilet in the closet. Am I the only one who finds the idea unsanitary?

          • Yeah. The toilet just out there is a little weird to me. I’m not sure what that room was supposed to be (design-wise). “I’m going to be here awhile, so let me brush up on my Chaucer”.

          • Nope, I’m with you on the “yuck” factor of the commode in the closet. And I agree that the top books are just for show 😕. Plus, someone is going to need to somehow climb up and dust those open rafters in that one room. 😳

          • My thoughts exactly. No way I want my clothes that close to the toilet, lol. The tree house in the backyard is pretty neat, tho.

          • Yep. I’ve seen a walk-in closet accessed thru a door the main bedroom’s en suite bathroom, but the lack of wall and door here is nuts. Makes me suspect it’s an unpermitted change that’s not to code.

          • I didn’t think the toilet was in the closet, I thought the closet was an open area in the bathroom. Maybe it makes getting dressed quicker when you’re clothes are in the bathroom? 🤷‍♀️

  4. I moved around a lot as a child and kids are just mean. Libraries were my sanctuary and I learned so much from them. Funny really didn’t use the school libraries but instead the public ones. I even took the bus downtown to the main one by myself when I was 7 or 8.

  6. Would question the current owner’s choice of Glassware in the cabinet under the stairs, when RARE Books SHOULD Be there!(just saying)

  7. it’s a beautiful library. i always wanted a secret room library. probably because i had so many siblings and as soon as you set the book down that you were reading it would disappear. 🙂

    • I recently read about (can’t remember if it was factually or on a book I was reading, my memory is gone 😣) a guy who had a bookshelf in his bedroom that was actually a secret door into a library! 😍😍😍

    • In my family the six of us kept books going in several rooms at once, Ali, because no sooner did one walk out of a room than someone else would see the book and say , “Hmmm… that looks interesting,” pick it up and start to read. The unspoken rule was that the other guy’s page had to be bookmarked or dog-eared so that he or she could find it again. An exercise that teaches memory and mental flexibility, it seems to me, but I never could get my daughters to agree.

  10. I clicked through to the original article and I think you may be burying the lede here. Yes, there is a beautiful library, but for 1.1 million you can also enjoy a toilet built into a closet. Or a closet built around a toilet, I’m not sure which.

    • But the cabinet over the toilet! Yikes! Too many chances on a daily basis for bruises to the top and/or back of your head!

  12. I already have a room full of bookshelves (and also workout equipment and a couch which folds out for guests). A multipurpose space but we call it the library…
    We visited a cousin of my MIL in Washington State this summer and what I now want is a sewing/craft room like hers (two knitting machines, s couple of sewing machines, tables and storage galore…). I make do with the dining room table

  13. I am wondering where door at top of stairs leads? If it is master bedroom, I would never leave those two rooms …

  15. Impressive library- but where are the comfy chairs or couches? This looks like a good place to store books- but not that good a place to read them.

    • I absolutely agree. A tiny table and bar stools with backs doesn’t fit in this room, and I question the intelligence of whatever house dresser stuffed that set in the library.

      There’s a fantasy painting of a cozy library–a hobbit-like circular window seat that includes laden bookshelves built into the upper curves is the focus. I absolutely lust after something like that (hubby has promised I can have it if we hit the Powerball), and of course I can’t find a copy to share with everyone now that I’m looking.

      • Lol, I have just hired a carpenter to build a bookcase for me, since I couldn’t find a good ready-made one that fit the available space. I still have one that was custom-built for a particular space in my previous house. Too bad romance was not an option in either case.

  17. Also, it seems like a showpiece and not functional. where’s the ladder? the functional part seems to be the wine rack they hid under the stairs!

  18. Okay I don’t believe they have comfy chairs anywhere to actually sit and read. Everything looks wooden even in their office. However that library wall is beautiful. Plus I am confused by the bathroom closet combo. I would hit my head on the cabinet getting up and down from the toilet in the middle of the night. However, I do love the open floor plan and beautiful vaulted ceilings.

  19. I am so intrigued by the library. Others have pointed out it appears there is no ladder to reach the top shelves, thinking those books are for show but if you look at those shelves, they do not look like show books. So either, we put things up there simply for these pictures to make the shelves look fuller or we get out like a 10 ft ladder from the garage everytime we want a book from the top part. It’s kind of a funny image in my head.

  20. It needs one of those Rolling ladders to reach the upper books, but only if there are no kids at heart in the house. The ladders are really fun.

  23. Beautiful. Sometimes make you wish that there were houses similar to Gertrude Hunt. Regular on outside but bigger on the inside so you can have a dream library or kitchen or craft room.

  25. I work at a public library. Cultivating a collection and maintaining a sizable library is a lot of work. I would not have this unless I also had the disposable income to hire someone to dust once a week and someone else to help weed the collection.

    • This is why I buy every barrister bookcase I can find. That is one so far though, and one I inherited. They are like hens’ teeth.

  26. I am 69, a retired Home Ec teacher, and have to laugh about some of the simple things people want. I just keep filling up walls with new bookcases.
    Buy wood, sand lightly, cut to size, stain, poly.mark, build.
    I usually do them in units, so a wall may actually be 6 to 10 different bookcases standing next to each other, with a screw or 2 holding them together. Run a piece of trim across the top, and it looks like a custom built unit.
    That leaves me with the option to easily move them, or take them.
    Why would I want blank wall space, when I can to up to my 9’6″ ceilings?
    I would love to show you a picture of even one wall.

  27. You should buy the home I saw in Seminole Al today at an estate sale. 4500 Square feet, one room had an inside tiled jacuzzi. Huge party size. Detached two car garage. Large barn with two leaning sheds, pool, grandma house with it’s own garage and potting shed, working well and on 17 acres with landscaped duck pond. Fenced.
    $969,000. Not a wreck.

  28. When I was in high school, we had to design a house and figure out the cost. The best feature my teacher liked of my design was that the entire third floor was a library accessible only from the master bedroom.

    • Oh, I’ve never been, must plan a trip! Thank you for sharing. I wonder if it was the inspiration for the Burlington salon at the Ritz, or the other way around. They’re strikingly similar.

      • Kenwood is well worth a visit, and it’s free! There’s also a gorgeous white Robert Adam library at Osterley Park House in west London. Quite the status symbol.

        Very interesting about the Burlington salon. I think Adam was the trend-setter who created the style, or at least he gets the credit for it nowadays. Maybe he was involved in both?

    • Funnily enough there’s a philosophy festival at Kenwood House this weekend. My brother suggested it to me. Music and philosophy and esoterica, so could be interesting.
      I used to take my dog down to Hampstead Heath and occasionally we’d put the lead back on and go in the grounds, always beautiful.

  30. The house must be sold with all the books. Oh, and there must be a secret passage through one of the book cases. If I’m spending over a million i need the fun books and the mystery.

    I loved my Nancy Drew and the secret passages and staircases. (That’s when the book hoarding started. I think.) When I see a home with a library like that, my imagination goes wild.

    • Ah, but if they didn’t take all of their books, where would you have room for all of your books?

      Also, I just want to say that this is my first time I the comments, and that I have been wanting to say something here for a while. BDH forever!!!

    • I was more into Trixie Belden. I wished I had kept my copies. They’ve released some of them in ebook format but not in sequence, so it’s something like books 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 16, etc.

  31. So, just looking at this picture, is that door on the right indicating you have to be naked to use the library? ‘Cause if that’s the case ( and I’m dropping into my local vernacular here) I ain’t sittin’ on anything there without spraying it down with Lysol and maybe using some bleach wipes on top of that. 😳 I do love the thought of a room full of books, though.

    • I missed the figures on the door, but I do like how there is food and drinks in and next to the library. Someone really planned that well.

  32. Just accessed the link to see the rest of the photos. Yes the shelves are floor to ceiling, but it’s just the one wall, with no safe way to access the upper shelves. Looks like it’s a combination library/dining room, which explains the crystal under the stairs. Sorry, not for me, however beautiful it is. Not enough book space. I’d want to convert one of the bedrooms to a dedicated library, with comfortable seating/lounging.

    • Also, that lovely hobbit door goes straight to the front porch. Which means the shelves are on an outside wall. The main inside entrance to the library is through the kitchen!

  34. When my brother and his family lived in Connecticut they had a library that was wall to wall bookshelves with short ones under the windows and extensions on the top of the regular bookshelves. The room was so large it had 4 ceiling fans, a large library table for homework, puzzles or games, 2 full-size leather sofas and 4 comfy chairs to read in. It was an amazing room. They still have a library in their new house in North Carolina but nothing to compare to the other one.

  35. I always wanted a library with a rolling ladder (or 3)! The library in Disney’s “Beauty and The Beast” (in the castle) was my first dream library. 😍

  36. Thank you for sharing! Most of my dream libraries are in movies or video games. Does anyone else remember a fabulous library in an old movie where Barbara Stanwyck is a nightclub singer who crashes professor Gary Cooper’s dictionary-writing institute? Also the library in the Danny Kaye musical remake. Both featured swoopy staircases in an extra-tall room with floor-to-ceiling shelves, kind of like this one, though with more books (and instruments, in the musical) and less barware.

  39. What I find interesting is how many novels have librarians as important characters, not to mention that all of the ones I’ve read are well written.
    I wonder why librarians are so popular.

  40. That picture reminds me of my mom’s library. She started with a bookcase that had wide boards that could have three rows of books on one shelf. My books, when I was very little, were on the bottom shelf. There were so many books, the bookcase sagged in the middle. The nice thing is I asked my dad to make me my own bookcase out of that original bookcase. I have it to this day.

    Then my mom graduated to having bookcases along one very long wall in a house we lived in in Missouri. I told her that we could start a library with all the books she had on the shelves. I got a tongue sticking out at me. 😁

    I have my mom to thank for my love of reading and books. 🥰

    I know there’s nothing like having a book in your hands. However, I’m glad for the e-book format.

  42. I would need a good ladder for the library. But I would have a really awesome craft room instead of one of the bedrooms.

  43. That’s a very eclectic renovation. Some very interesting choices. 10 out of 10 with no notes on the library tho.

  44. I would love a tree house library; glass walls, spiral staircase, coffee machine, mini frig, and and a couple of those moon bag chairs. Most importantly a huge sign that states “READERS ONLY!” Lol

  45. I like it somewhat since it’s bookcases, but have to admit there’s an unpleasant edge of lawyerly-ness that is giving me the ick. It just gives me an unpleasant barrister vibe, I half expected a periwig to be lying on the table top.
    I think that London prices may have messed me up too since that seems rather cheap for such a large property with a garden. I’m unfamiliar with San Antonio obviously but my understanding is it’s a pretty big city and I’m guessing the house is at least vaguely commutable. You would not get that much house for that price here and probably not in Birmingham or Manchester either.

    • I do the same thing, but with throw carpets. I don’t care how many times I wipe my feet, there’s still stuff on the carpets inside all of my exterior doors.

  50. i will mention (from experience) it’s actually not that hard to make entire walls and areas into bookcases and frame them up nicely. can look amazing and cost less than you might think. 😁

    the only down side is now i want to do the same thing to more of my rooms.

  54. Gorgeous library!! I agree, too rich for me to afford. I also don’t think I could live in Texas – personally, the bugs, heat, storms, and politics all would kill me (any single one of them would be enough, but all of them combined terrify me lol). I still want that library though…

  55. Beautiful!! In SoCal, I can only hope a $1.1M house would have one small IKEA shelf. 😂🤣

    But jokes aside, I dream of one day building myself a library in a future home. A true retreat and hopefully an inspiring room for my kids.

  56. I like the books, but the entire house looks so industrial. For me it’s the difference between a house and a home. My house is 1200sf and over a century old, and currently requires a lot of repair and renovation, but it’s home. I couldn’t live in that shiny newish one.

  58. That is a gorgeous library…but you have to wonder how many of the books are useful or fun to read.

  61. Yes, only in my dreams…sigh…add a small bedroom, bathroom, kitchenette, screened in front porch and a spacious yard & someone to do the yard work… I could be deliriously happy there.

  62. Oh, had I that kind of money lying around, I would buy this house just for the library… (sighs) …

  64. Love that kitchen, too. But I keep looking at it and thinking how my cats would give me heart failure on those beams.

  65. Gorgeous! And I also love arches and rounded doors. But my dream library is like this, but accessed via a hidden doorway…

  66. I love it. I once rented a house for a year that had a small library with shelves up to the dental trim. It was an old Victorian and that was my favorite room. I hated to leave that place. Maybe if you buy in North Carolina you may get one. Always a hope.

  67. Library…magic. The rest…not so much. The closet/bathroom is a tragedy. We lived in SA for 12 years, and that’s the issue with Alamo Heights. Some of the houses are amazing and some are yikes.

  68. sigh. A circular 2 story library room with a ladder that zooms around the room on a track, a fireplace, several different comfy chairs and a sofa, furry/fluffy-type rug on warm wood flooring and cup of delicious hot chocolate or iced passion fruit green tea (depending on the season) and a plate of assorted pastries. double sigh

  70. I love libraries but the idea of dusting all that gives me hives.
    Wait until you get a movie deal & then you can hire a housekeeper. lol!

  71. Gorgeous!!

    Sadly, where I am in Canada that house is downright cheap even with the conversion rate. 😭😭😭. Here that amount might get you a house but it would be seriously run down or pretty far out of the urban centre.

  72. I’d love to have a massive library like the one pictured here too. But honestly it’s such a pain to take care of physical books in the heat and humidity of the Philippines. The pages turn brown in just a couple of years and they get foxing

  73. Are these people avid readers with a drinking problem, or avid drinkers with a reading problem?
    We used to have a library to make us feel smart.
    When we downsized one time, we traded the library for a studio/project room because we realized that we hadn’t pulled a book from the shelves since our last move.
    Now we both have our iPhones and MacBooks at hand and keep all our books on apps. Need a recipe? its just a couple of clicks away on the ‘net.
    I still have one shelf of cookbooks that I haven’t looked at in the 6 years we’ve lived here. I just asked my husband a couple of days ago to List them so I could have the shelf space.
    If You love your library, Do enjoy it — to each their own.

  78. you know, with air conditioning, obviously to keep the books in good condition, it doesn’t matter how hot it is 😜

  79. My only concern would be, is there someone who would rearrange the books when you buy new ones? I know I’m always having to rearrange because mine are alphabetized by title, under each author. 😉

  80. As someone who worked her way through college as a library assistant… I appreciate your love of books and libraries.

    Also I am wondering if there is a librarian equivalent to innkeepers in your world.

    Someone has to me making all the updates that librarians use to keep their inns safe after all.

  82. It’s sooo gorgeous; I want to go to there! I know its just off the kitchen, but I’d still want to change the glass & goblet storage into a coffee & tea nook so I wouldn’t have to leave the library for a candy coffee or iced tea. I’d just be cozy in my cocoon woven of words and breathe in the intoxicating aroma of fresh brew and books…

  83. Thinking about dream houses…. I pictured a library in a comfy house on the coast….

    Which for some reason made me wonder if Kate and Curran have ever been to a Savannah Banana’s game with Conlan?

  84. How would you get to the upper shelves? Especially if you are vertically challenged? I don’t see a moving ladder, What I did notice is that this is a show library. It definitely doesn’t get any use, abuse, or love.

  86. I built a library (with a rolling ladder and a window seat with a vaulted ceiling) in the study in my 2B/2B home. I work from home so I included a built-in desk as well. It’s my dream room.

    I’ve been moving elfa shelves that I’ve installed in 2 homes and 3 apartments over the past 20y, and it was my dream to eventually have built-in shelves.

    They’ll have to drag me out of this house.

    I’d post photos if there was a way to do so.

  88. Thank you for sharing the pictures, that’s inspirational!
    A library room is a dream I am currently working on making true. But it is still a long, very long, full of w**ting long way to go.

    Here, I always wanted to share pictures of the Admont Abbey Library with HA and BDH: https://stiftadmont.at/en/ueber-die-stiftsbibliothek/
    It looks so unreal to me, that is how I imagine a library in the Innkeeper world somewhere.

    • Actually, it is the other way around.
      I was there in person, many years ago. Until this day I vividly remember the feeling of stepping into this library as entering a different world, away from our planet.
      So when I started reading Innkeeper series, I suddenly realized I know how it feels, to go through the Inn’s door. That’s why I associate this library with the Innkeeper world.

  89. If you are interested in dream library with books from bottom to top, the one from the Clementinum in Prague is beautiful 🤩

  90. When I bought a house, I was excited to add built-in floor-to-ceiling books everywhere. Then I realized if I did that, I’d have no place to hang art. Ended up with half-wall cases with pictures above. Speaking of which, got a print of the upside-down cleaner from the artist who does many of your covers. https://www.luisapreissler.de/parttimegods Debating what kind of wood to use to frame her in. Perhaps cherry or white oak. Decisions, decisions.

  92. The two floor library = so amazing and every book lover’s dream.
    The combo closet/bathroom = absolutely hate.

  94. I live in Corpus Christi and it’s always a little cooler than the rest of Texas in the summer and a little warmer in the winter!

  95. I had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves at one point. Sure, the shelves were plain planks spaced out by bricks. It doesn’t take a million dollar house.

    Not a fan of a library with so much hard wood and so few places to sit and read though.

  97. Love to have a library room don’t think I’d want it two story but to have space for lord of books heaven

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