10th
Experience The Walker Library of Human Imagination
“The Walker Library has been described on the cover of Wired magazine as “The most amazing library in the world.” It is certainly a private library unlike any other. Set on three maze-like levels, it showcases a collection of thousands of rare books, artworks, maps and manuscripts as well as museum-quality artifacts both modern and ancient. Both the Library and the collection are dedicated to an overarching theme: The History of Human Imagination — humanity’s intellectual and emotional adventure of discovery, learning, and creativity.
The genesis of the Library occurred in the mid-1990s based on Jay S. Walker’s passion for history, technology and the scope of human invention. After six years of planning and computer modeling, the Library was constructed in 2002.
The Library is itself a considerable work of imagination, beginning with its unique layout and lighting. Multilevel tiers, “floating” platforms, connecting stairways, and glass-paneled bridges were all inspired by the mind-bending art of M. C. Escher, whose architectural drawings seem to defy the laws of space and gravity.” (…) — Source & More facts about Walker Library
Browse the Artifacts of Geek History in Jay Walker’s Library:
Nothing quite prepares you for the culture shock of Jay Walker’s library. You exit the austere parlor of his New England home and pass through a hallway into the bibliographic equivalent of a Disney ride. Stuffed with landmark tomes and eye-grabbing historical objects—on the walls, on tables, standing on the floor—the room occupies about 3,600 square feet on three mazelike levels. Is that a Sputnik? (Yes.) Hey, those books appear to be bound in rubies. (They are.) That edition of Chaucer … is it a Kelmscott? (Natch.) Gee, that chandelier looks like the one in the James Bond flick Die Another Day. (Because it is.) No matter where you turn in this ziggurat, another treasure beckons you—a 1665 Bills of Mortality chronicle of London (you can track plague fatalities by week), the instruction manual for the Saturn V rocket (which launched the Apollo 11 capsule to the moon), a framed napkin from 1943 on which Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined his plan to win World War II. In no time, your mind is stretched like hot taffy. (…)
Wearing a huge can-you-believe-it grin is the collection’s impresario, the 52-year-old Internet entrepreneur and founder of Walker Digital — a think tank churning out ideas and patents, it’s best-known for its lucrative Priceline.com. “I started an R&D lab and have been an entrepreneur. So I have a big affinity for the human imagination,” he says. “About a dozen years ago, my collection got so big that I said, ‘It’s time to build a room, a library, that would be about human imagination. (…)”
☞ See also: Jay Walker talk about his library at TED
