Sleep Among the Books in these Residential Libraries

Home is where your books are. Or at least that’s the case when it comes to residential libraries, where you can spend a night among the sweet, sweet scent of books.

In Colorado, two bookstore employees are working to transform an abandoned 60-acre cattle ranch into what they call a “literary ‘home on the range’ for writers, artists, and nature-lovers.”

Jeff Lee and Anne Marie Martin’s vision for The Rocky Mountain Land Library project includes more than 35,000 books about nature and the American West. The married couple hopes to be finished come summer. A campaign on Kickstarter that ends on April 8 has already exceeded it’s $125,000 goal.

Located in Colorado’s Front Range, the “live-in library” will feature dorm rooms, art studios and dining hall” so visitors can “camp and fish, study and explore.”

Gladstone’s Library in North Wales boasts that it is “the UK’s finest residential library” and with over 150,000 printed materials on the premises, they may be right.

Spend a night in one of the library’s 26 boutique bedrooms and you’ll be granted extended use of their reading rooms. Some books can be taken away to your bedroom for after hours enjoyment. Plus, the library also awards more than fifty scholarships yearly for those who wish to visit for research purposes and cannot afford a weeklong stay.

The Library Hotel in New York City is inspired by the Dewey Decimal system. Spanning 10 floors — each dedicated to one of the 10 categories of classification system — these 60 rooms feature their own library, totaling over 6,000 books in all. On the hotel’s rooftop, a writer’s den and poetry garden complete with a fire place and greenhouse offer plenty of places to curl up with a good book after a day spent buzzing around the Big Apple.

For a more permanent stay, there are 13 library apartments left in the New York Public Library system. These spaces were occupied by a custodian (and his family) tasked with keeping coal fires burning, but as heating systems upgraded, the apartments became vacant. Here’s what remains.

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