Bibliomania, concealed books, the most fun I've had in a long time

I have spent the last several weeks working on a project that has been remarkably interesting. The collector was a bibliomanic, in the classic sense. He was a historian, an archivist and a passionate book collector. He also evolved into an obsessive collector. 

The house has approximately 200 linear feet of bookshelves. Using the traditional average of 10/linear foot, there should be about 2000 books or so in the house. Except there were not...there were more...lots and lots more.

After retirement, he began began as series of remodeling and/or cabinetmaking projects. He was quite good. His wife knew he was an avid

collector. Perhaps a bit too avid, but she limited him to his library and his bedroom and one or two other limited areas. 

What his wife never knew, until very recently, is that...when she was out...he filled the knee-walls on the third floor with carefully packed boxes of books. He filled more than one concealed room in the basement with carefully packed boxes of books. Best of all, he built concealed places into several places in the house to hide his gems.

All told, it appears there were at least 15,000 books and very likely +/-20,000 in the house. That is, about 10 to 1 what one would expect to find. His family remains baffled as to when and how he

managed to get all these books into the house...how he managed to bring in the dozens and dozens of packing crates into which he packed his books...how no one knew. 

The pictures show two of the spaces. The first is a hinged door, built into the side of a vent baffle under bookcases in his office. There is a magnet closure that keeps the door shut tight. The space behind it is about 6 inches high, 12 inches deep and about 2.5 feet deep.

The other three pictures show my favorite (thus far). When you remove the bottom drawer of the built in china cabinet he built approximately 25 years ago, you discover a solid base. The base

plates have no movement and appear to be nailed down. It is only when you carefully remove the little spacer between the two plates (seen in the second and third image on the front plate) that the plates can be effortlessly removed. It is simple and elegant and created a cavernous space behind the baseboard.

There have been some great books, though the signal to noise ratio is definitely high. More than anything, however, it has just been wonderful to spend time exploring this collector's life, habits and passion. It has been an adventure I will never forget and has given me a slew of stories I'll be telling...well...forever. Still a ways to go with this, though the heavy lifting is done. I'll be posting in a bit about a few of the things that were part of the collection. I have had *way* too much fun. [N.B. I secured express permission from the family to post about this adventure.]