The Library Comeback

Libraries - dusty and musty no more.

Libraries are back in Style.

Big books, old books, red books, green books, leather or paper, used or rare, it's a fashionable stylistic mash up. A recent article in the The Wall St. Journal reports that people are not reading more books, but the library is staging a huge comeback. Why? A desire for a sanctuary, a picture room, a 'memory room'.

What is the most popular room in new big houses? What d0 63% of home buyers (according to the National Assoc. of Home Builders latest survey) consider essential? - The library. Craftsmen are building elegant libraries in exotic woods, even with secret doors. Sometimes two! His and hers libraries, why not? My favorite books are cherished and my husbands books are what made him smart, he is a veritable walking encyclopedia. His collection fills a room , and the floor.... and I know better than to disturb. Our books do not commingle, I expect to find my books exactly where I place them on my bookshelves, and I marvel that he can find anything at all. We're perfect candidates for his and hers libraries.

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me" - C.S. Lewis, I'll second that.

"A library may suggest a certain level of erudition, but only if the books have actually been read", - my husband. A big room, housing a big library, means a big adventure. Classics, children's books, dictionaries, Gatsby and Ulysses, first editions, cover worn dog-eared paperbacks, rare gems, and poetry. Careful not to touch! Those old leather backs are trouble, not to mention messy, they can disintegrate in your hands.

For those who do not want to reveal titles, some bibliophiles turn the spines to the wall showing only the mysterious ivory pages of the books. Now that is a look, I admit never to have seen, my husband says it was a popluar thing to do at Columbia. You have to know exactly where every book is placed, or just like the rich warm color of paper.
To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul.- Cicero

A perfectly wonderful library is found in Wrentham House. This 1891 Richard Morris Hunt stone mansion on the highest elevation along Ocean Avenue, has a soul and then some.

The Wrentham House mahogany library, with wood carved fireplace, high plastered ceilings, circular tower room with built-in seats, and spectacular ocean views, is ready to be filled with books and memories, why not make them yours?

Tree Weather

When the weather is perfectly heavenly, we walk in clouds and listen to the long deep bellow of the fog horns.

No ocean in sight, no coastal vistas to behold, just the sound of the ocean coming ashore, this is the Newport that I adore.

So many things to do on a gray rainy day, when the sun goes under cover, that's the time to explore!


"I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree", the poet Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918) maintained a summer residence here in Newport. He may have walked under a canopy of magnificent trees similar to these at The Elms and was inspired to write this beautiful poem. Newport is an arborists paradise, a playground for the tree enthusiast, the mature elm, copper beech, weeping beech, tulip trees take on even more romantic form, when silhouetted against a background of white.



Walk, and walk and walk, take any side street in Newport, and see a doorway, a gate, a gable, a stable! Perhaps you will even find a home you did not know you knew, but something has moved you to take a closer look and once inside you'll feel like settling in and reading a book. A gray day has the power to make a house a home.





And when you are ready for a rest from your adventures afoot, take a stroll to the Aquidneck Lobster Company for lobster or the day's catch, unloaded right here at the dock, and take it home, perhaps even, to enjoy in the warmth of your new home.