Art Hotels

ShelvesThe collection here is not an amenity but the reason the building stands at all. Reading rooms hold the main body of it, and the residential wing sits alongside, so that a person can stay where the shelves are. Nobody goes outdoors to reach them.

Who put them thereIt began as the working collection of the statesman whose name the place carries, and it passed afterwards into the care of a trust. Librarians since then have added along the same lines, so the arrangement follows a scholarly purpose rather than a decorative one, and it shows.

What the room doesThe reading rooms are used for study, and the house around them keeps the quiet that study asks for. People stay several nights, work at long tables, and treat the building as a place of employment rather than a lounge.

ShelvesBooks are distributed upward through the building, and each floor is given over to one branch of an established library classification. A guest room therefore sits inside a subject rather than beside one. Volumes stand on open shelving in the corridors and in the rooms themselves.

Who put them thereThe scheme was set by the house when it opened, and the published account describes a classification borrowed wholesale from library practice rather than invented for the occasion. Stock is kept up by staff, and the division between floors is maintained as guests move things around.

What the room doesCorridors do the work here, because the shelving is in them, and reading happens in a common room upstairs rather than in a dedicated hall. The building is narrow, so a floor reads as a single long space with doors along it.

ShelvesA former brewery hall carries shelving that runs from the floor to a very high ceiling, and the volumes on it came to the house from an earlier collection rather than being assembled for the room. The scale of the hall is what a visitor registers first.

Who put them therePublished material describes the holdings as an antiquarian collection acquired complete and installed here, which is why the spines look uniform in age and unrelated to the business of a hotel. Staff maintain the shelving, and the upper reaches are handled with ladders rather than by guests reaching up.

What the room doesThe hall serves as a lounge and as a bar, and people sit in it right through the evening. Because the ceiling is so high, sound carries a long way, which suits conversation more than it suits any kind of concentrated reading.

ShelvesTwo things sit side by side in this house: shelving in the public parts of the ground floor, and a room set aside for writers who are staying to work. The second is the unusual one, because it is accommodation given over to a purpose rather than a display.

Who put them thereThe house runs a published cultural programme, and the writer’s room belongs to that programme rather than to the front desk. Selection is handled through it, and the shelving downstairs is maintained by the hotel in connection with the same activity rather than as a decoration of the lobby.

What the room doesThe public shelving is where guests pass rather than where they settle, and the writer’s room is closed to everyone but its occupant. The building holds readings and talks, so the ground floor changes use through the week.

ShelvesReading here happens in a corner rather than a hall, and the volumes gathered there lean towards the house itself and the coast it looks over. Shelving is domestic in scale, built into a part of the building that was a family home before it took guests.

Who put them thereThe family who own the house have kept it in their hands across generations, and published accounts tie the contents of that corner to their own long interest in the place. It is a household arrangement continued into a hotel rather than a service assembled for visitors.

What the room doesThe corner is somewhere to sit for a while between other things, not a room with its own door. It faces the water like most of the house, and people use it in the early part of the day.

ShelvesOn the older side of the building there is a salon fitted with glazed cases, and the shelving belongs to the room as joinery rather than as furniture brought in later. It reads as part of the plan of the floor, in the way a fireplace does.

Who put them thereThe house has a long published association with writers and public figures of the city, and the salon is presented in exactly that light. What the cases hold is looked after by the hotel; the room itself has been restored over time rather than newly fitted out.

What the room doesThe salon is used for sitting, for meetings and occasionally for events, so its purpose shifts across the course of a day. It is a passage as much as a destination, since the older wing of the building runs directly through it.