Bookshelf Murals Around The World

Edit Note: July 01, 2020
This post has under gone a major update. Please ignore this post  and visit the updated post which, as on date, contains 41 murals.
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This is a collection of buildings which have a realistic mural (Trompe-l'oeil - French for "deceive the eye") painted on their façade which creates an optical illusion of large bookshelf with giant sized books. There are many murals depicting books but only those murals which illustrate a bookshelf have been included in this collection.

Till date I have found following bookshelf buildings (listed in random order). These are;

1. City Library Parking Garage, Kansas, Missouri, USA
2. School Gymnasium Building, Tyumen, Russia
3. Transformer Sub-Station, St. Petersburg, Russia
4. The Municipal Library, Lyon, France
5. Parking Garage, Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA
6. Circle City Books, Pittsboro, NC, USA
7. Eborn Books, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
8. Loganberry Books, Shaker Heights, Cleveland, OH, USA
9. The Bookcase, Amsterdam, Holland
10. Duluth Public Library, Duluth, MN, USA
11. Collège du Sacré-Cœur de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada

Most of these works were created by actually painting with brush/sprays, few by printing on Vinyl/Mylar and one is made out of ceramic tiles.

The collection will be expanded as and when I find more such bookshelves. My readers can also help me in finding new ones.

Given below are brief details of these murals along with images and location;

City Library Parking Garage, Kansas, Missouri, USA
This is the most famous of the bookshelf building and perhaps the earliest.

The façade is made of signboard Mylar and show cases 22 titles (full list) on a wide variety of reading interests, suggested by Kansas City readers and then selected by The Kansas City Public Library Board of Trustees. The book spines measure approximately 25 feet (7.62 metres) by 9 feet (2.74 metres).

Image from Flickr is by jonathan_moreau

View location in Google Maps and Street View

Source of info: kclibrary.org

School Gymnasium Building, Tyumen, Russia

A bookshelf painted on the wall of a school building in a school in Tyumen by the art group ‘Color of the City’.

Brain child of Dmitriy Zyelyenin who along with Syergyey Shapoval, Lyena Koorash, Dima Danilov  and Boris Nyepomnyashshiy created this giant mural. As per painters they had never painted on such a big canvas (200 square meters - 2150 Sq. ft.) and had never worked on high scaffolding.

Image from Wikimedia Commons is by Дмитрий Кошелев

View location in Google Maps (Not available in Google Street View)

Source of info: adme.ru (In Russian) (English Translation). Page contains some nice pictures while it was being painted.

Transformer Sub-Station, St. Petersburg, Russia

Located in Rossiysky prospect, the local Energy company (TEK) painted the two walls of a transformer substation into a stack of books. The mural contains some famous titles like; The Master and Margarita, Three Men in a Boat, as well as company's own manual for "Emergency and Recovery Operations.

Image from defunct Panoramio (now available in web.archive.org ) is by Александр Мэджик

View location in Google Maps and Street View

Source of info: behance.net

The Municipal Library, Lyon, France

The mural at the Municipal Library (La Bibliothèque De La Cité) is part of the beatification plan of the city. The 400 Sq. metre (4,300 Sq. ft.) mural on the façade of 4-5 upper floors of the building was created by CitéCréation.

Image from Flickr is by thierry llansades

Image from Flickr is by thierry llansades

View location in Google Maps and Street View

Source of info: francetoday.com

Parking Garage, Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA

The mural titled "The Knowledge" was created in 2010 by Harrell Fletcher with Avalon Kalin. Book titles reflect education and sustainability efforts and were chosen by a poll of students, faculty and staff. The mural was made by actually stacking the selected books, photographing the stack, creating a large vinyl bill board from the photograph and finally pasting the billboard on the blank wall of the building.

It was selected as one of Americans for the Arts 2010 Outstanding Public Artworks.

Image from Flickr is by Michael Allen

View location in Google Maps and Street View

Source of info: Official web Page of artist Harrell Fletcher

Circle City Books, Pittsboro, NC, USA

The mural at Circle City Books was created in 2012. Initially it had forty-eight titles. Later in June 2013 three books (the horizontal stack ) were added through a local competition. The books include "The Hope of Liberty" by George Moses Horton, "Light in August" by William Faulkner, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou, and "Cold Mountain" by Charles Frazier (full list).

Image from Flickr is by Andrea Schwartz

View location in Google Maps and Street View

Source of info: articles.latimes.com

Eborn Books, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
A mural painted on the back wall of the Eborn Books (formerly Sam Weller’s Bookstore). The mural shows the spines of some classic books and Utah cult favourites.

Image from Flickr is by dodge.rachel

View location in Google Maps (The mural is on the back wall of the shop and not visible in Google Street View.)

Source of info: cityweekly.net

Loganberry Books, Shaker Heights, OH, USA

Mural on the side wall of the Loganberry Books on Larchmere Boulevard, Shaker Heights, Cleveland. The 22.5 metres (74 ft) long mural was created by local artist Gene Epstein. Printed on vinyl-coated polyester, the spines displayed include a wide variety of books. As per the artist, "the criteria we had was that the books should be 25 percent children's literature, 25 percent related to the Larchmere community, 25 percent representing the businesses, and 25 percent about Cleveland." The books were nominated by community members and finally selected by a committee of residents and shop owners.

Image Source: Google Street View

Source of info: freshwatercleveland.com

The Bookcase, Amsterdam, Holland

This Mural on the façade of a residential building in the Lootsstraat, Amsterdam is unique as it is made of coloured ceramic tiles which represent specific books. The mural which has 250 unique, ceramic books was created in 2006 by Dutch artist, Sanja Medic in collaboration with the ceramist P.Kemink (Koloriet, Amsterdam) and graphic designers Melle Hammer and Susanne Laws.

The mural is titled De Batavier (De Boekenkast) (Boekenkast = Bookcase) and the the building on which it is made is in a neighbourhood where streets are named after Dutch poets and writers from the 18th and 19th century, namely C. Loots (Lootsstraat), van Lennep (Jacob van Lennepstraat), Heije (Jan Pieter Heijestraat), J. Kinker (Kinkerstraat) and A.C.W. Staring (Staringstraat). Each book in the mural carries the title of a poem from one of the above referred poets or a drawing from the famous 18th century book by Johan Enschede.

Permission by Sanja Medic to use images from www.sanjamedic.com is thankfully acknowledged.

View location in Google Maps and Street View

Source of info: www.sanjamedic.com and cfileonline.org

Duluth Public Library, Duluth, MN, USA

A bookshelf mural in the Duluth Public Library plaza. The 7 metres (23.5 ft.) tall mural, titled "Books on the Plaza" was painted by Scott Murphy, a local muralist.

The selection of the books was based on suggestions from public, library staff and the artist and the main criteria was to depict range of the library's collections, books with decorative spines and books of local interest and significance.

Image Credits: Duluth Public Library (Permission to use image is thankfully acknowledged)

View location in Google Maps and Street View

Source of info: www.duluthgov.info (in pdf)

Collège du Sacré-Cœur de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada

Painted on the side wall of Collège du Sacré-Cœur de Sherbrooke by team M.U.R.R.I.S. (Urban Murals for the Revitalization of Buildings and Social Reconciliation), the mural titled "Heart, Culture and Pedagogy" was completed in 2011. The 11.9 metres (39 ft.) wide and 12.8 metres (42 ft.) tall mural showcases books from more than 100 authors and was created as a part of beautifying the city and increasing the tourist appeal.

Image from defunct Panoramio (now available in web.archive.org ) is by Mario Hains

View location in Google Street View

Source of info: murirs.qc.ca
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View all these locations in Google Earth: Download kmz file.