Libraries in private homes lack the hustle and bustle of public lending libraries, and yet they can be wonderful places to explore and better understand the inner lives of the people who spent time in them. Private libraries can be practical workspaces or rooms for receiving guests, their walls covered in bookshelves or art. Materials on display might reveal that the person who used them was a dedicated hobbyist, a serious scholar, an eccentric collector–or perhaps even all of the above.

Each of the libraries at these five National Trust Historic Sites meant different things to the people who occupied them, and tell different stories to visitors today, but they all offer a peek inside a person’s hobbies, interests, and passions that help bring the past to life.

Villa Finale: A Book Collection with Texas Personality

Walter Mathis, an art collector and preservationist, loved his library, too–in fact, it was the most regularly-used room in his San Antonio home, Villa Finale. Mathis bought the 1876 house in 1967, spent years meticulously restoring it, and bequeathed it to the National Trust in 2004. Today, the site preserves and interprets San Antonio’s history, as well as Mathis’ effort to preserve it.

While arguably as grandly decorated as Woodrow Wilson’s library (which you will learn about below), the personality on display in the collection of books that grace his walls stands in sharp contrast to the former president’s. Instead of a dissertation, or books from leading scholars of the time, Mathis’ library contains books representing more down-to-earth aspects of history. These include a 1941 Prosit: A Book of Texas Toasts and a 1911 guide to San Antonio’s gambling houses and brothels.

Oatlands: Many Lives, One Library

Not all libraries at National Trust sites were always libraries. At Oatlands in Leesburg, Virginia, a set of former outbuildings called the Garden Dependency is now the home of their Garden Library. Opened in 2009, the library complements the Oatlands’ beloved gardens with a wide range of books, from comprehensive regional gardening guides, to books dedicated exclusively to azaleas, lilies, tulips, and more. It also includes two books written and signed by Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, the horticulturalist and philanthropist who founded the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, a horticultural nonprofit located in nearby Upperville, Virginia.

Today, the Garden Dependency is a library, and Oatlands grounds serve as a space for people to explore the cultivated and uncultivated natural world. But Oatlands began its history as a plantation and a site of enslavement, and it remains dedicated to “valuing and lifting the voices of all who have shaped and been shaped by this historic site.”

The Garden Dependency is no different–along with being a place to learn about horticulture, it also commemorates the enslaved people who lived in the buildings during the first half of the nineteenth century, as well as the free African Americans who continued to work the lands in the century following Emancipation. Today, while visiting the library, visitors to Oatlands can learn about this history through the exhibit "Reclaim Your Story,” which was written and designed by descendants of those enslaved at Oatlands.

Brucemore: Discover Irene Douglas’ Love of Bookbinding

Like Oatlands, Brucemore in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is a sweeping site of grand buildings and beloved gardens that is dedicated to inspiring people through its history and continued use today. Throughout the year, the estate produces and hosts concerts, theater performances, and a community-serving garden, while tours share stories of the many different people who lived and worked on the estate.

Irene Douglas, who lived at Brucemore from 1906 until her death in 1937, had the most significant impact on the design of Brucemore’s buildings and gardens, and it's her love of books and book arts that is celebrated in the mansion’s library. Douglas was an amateur bookbinder, and even established a bookbindery on the property. Today, visitors can see many of the books she bound herself on the library’s shelves, including a 40 volume edition of the complete works of Shakespeare, and other treasured volumes from the family’s collection.

Hotel de Paris library: The Public Library That Wasn’t

When Louis Dupuy, the owner of the Hotel de Paris in Georgetown, Colorado died in the year 1900, the local library association took an immediate interest in the building. Since 1875 it had served as a hotel and restaurant, catering to regular borders and other locals in this mining boomtown, but the Georgetown Library Association thought the building would make a perfect location for the town’s first public library, particularly given that it was already home to Dupuy’s significant book collection. They contacted steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie for help, and Carnegie offered to buy and convert the hotel–but the sale never happened because town locals were against it. Among other reasons, they objected to Dupuy’s library materials, calling them too eclectic and particular to be suitable for a public library.

Though it may have been a loss to the Georgetown Library Association at the time, this failed effort means that visitors to the Hotel de Paris Museum today can see Dupuy’s immense collection of books, periodicals, reference works, catalogs, maps, and art portfolios exactly as Dupuy himself would have. While located behind glass due to their age, visitors can search the catalog through the historic sites’ online database. Materials in his vast library include writings by controversial thinkers like Karl Marx, John Kellogg, and John Stuart Mill, popular periodicals like the Atlantic Monthly and Popular Science, and books on topics ranging from the occult to mining.

The Woodrow Wilson House Library: A Mind at Work

As the only President to earn a PhD and to have been awarded a whopping 33 honorary degrees, it’s fair to say that Woodrow Wilson was one America’s most scholastically-inclined commanders-in-chief. Visitors to the Woodrow Wilson House in Washington, D.C., where Wilson and Edith Wilson lived after leaving the White House, stands testament to his many academic interests.

The library is decorated with darkly painted walls and tufted furniture with a fireplace at its center and a large desk at one end. It has the air of a room where someone of Wilson’s significance might entertain important guests—and, in fact, it was. As his health began to fail, Wilson’s personal physician, Dr. Cary Grayson, insisted that he have only one visitor each day, and he often met them at precisely 3:30pm in this library.