A House to Look Smart In

The idea of curling with a good book has increasingly come to flipping on an e-reader, not flipping the pages of a leather-bound novel in a book-lined room.

Yet the home library is the rise, having become something of a cerebral status . Affluent homeowners are buying quality books quantity to amass collections private personal libraries. These rooms are as much aesthetic pieces and public displays intelligence as are quiet spaces to reflect and retreat. Some people also seeking the services of experts to help pull notable collections or to advise the look, feel and content of their home libraries.

Dan Rubin, a principal of Alloy Ventures, a Palo Alto, Calif., venture capital firm, is known his friends for his home library. It is filled the 3,000 books he began collecting a teen. He mostly kept them in boxes, the father of three moved into a new home a few years , and asked the architect to build a library his collection. Mr. Rubin, 52 years old, wanted the library "look grand, like I just came back to London conquering, say, Kafiristan," he jokes.

It is a room for Mr. Rubin's son, 15, to prepare his science presentation, or Mr. Rubin to read while the rest of the family is homework or watching television. "It's a place to pause all of the constant chatter of iPads and smartphones, a place to actually communicate with another," he says.

The two-story, English walnut-lined room has five reading nooks, a work desk can be hidden behind two sliding doors, and a spiral staircase leads to a catwalk of books and the master bedroom.

Other libraries combine leisure activities. Mary Foley, half of the New York design duo Foley & Cox, recently built a "dining library," which guests can discuss books after a long dinner, and a "playroom library," "subliminally encourages children be with books rather than always the television or computer." Ms. Foley, helped develop Ralph Lauren Home during her 20 years that company, says the libraries tend eschew stereos or televisions "because there is already Wi-Fi everywhere if they need it, and the iPad goes where go."

Juniper Books' collection-development service attracts people want a library but had the time or inclination to amass a collection of books. "Part of desire [to create libraries] is for people to look smart and well-read, and of it is the quest for some great knowledge in this electronic ," says Thatcher Wine, owner of Juniper Books, in Boulder, Colo. The company's collection-development business doubled last year a few hundred clients. It charges by the linear foot—or by the individual book— most libraries in the $3,000 to $100,000 range.

Most of Mr. Wine's clients " specific needs and interests, it finding the complete works of William Faulkner or collecting all white vellum-wrapped tomes create a Versailles-style library." A typical client is a 35- to 55-year-old hedge fund manager, Hollywood mogul or technology executive. Lately he's noticed a return classic fiction, Jane Austen (he makes a custom set of six Austen novels wrapped matching pink, leather-style jackets), and Charles Dickens, plus the Greek and Latin philosophers. "I hear a that homeowners want their children be familiar with the great authors," Mr. Wine says.

Rare-books dealer Donald Heald says his 40-year-old company, in New York, has seen a huge uptick in clients in their 30s of .


Adapted and abridged from: The Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2012.