When Richard Platt and his wife, Susan, first moved from Southern California to Pebble Beach in 2013, he immediately turned his attention to priority number-one: Housing his collection of roughly 5,000 books in a 1,100-square-foot house. “I needed space for my books,” Platt says. “This was just a garage with open rafters and cobwebs and a broken concrete floor.” It’s still technically a garage with carriage doors, but the cars live in the driveway and the space is an inviting library. The floor is covered in red brick, the walls lined with Douglas fir shelves. He uses a shillelagh to point at the well organized collection—there are shelves of reference books (including the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, “just because it’s a talisman, it’s an icon”). There’s a section for Jewish scholarship. And then the fiction begins, in chronological order beginning with the Greeks, and it wraps all the way around the corner. This room reflects a downsized version of the writer’s collection, with about 2,500 books, all of which he consults with regularity—this is a working library, not just decorative. Although, Platt says, “The fact that it’s aesthetically pleasing makes 32 THE BEST OF MONTEREY BAY ® HAVEN 2026-2027 Top Shelf IN HOME LIBRARIES, FORM MEETS FUNCTION FOR BOOK COLLECTORS. By Sara Rubin DAVID TSAY SARA RUBIN Libraries can be minimalist (as in the open upstairs space crafted by Feldman Architecture, above left), or designed to accommodate collections of thousands of books, such as Richard Platt’s converted garage (below left).
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjAzNjQ1NQ==