Comments on: The World's Most Extraordinary Rooms

Question: The World's Most Extraordinary Rooms

foxy_hedgehog — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:24:37 -0800

Strange as it might sound, I am compiling a list of rooms. I am eager to draw upon the travels, explorations, and creative minds of metafilter to help flesh out the list.

The main criterion is that the room should have been used for a purpose at one point, and not be used now. In other words, the room (or space) must be frozen in a moment. Along the lines of the rooms in this post:http://www.metafilter.com/73955/Literary-Voyeurism.

This means that the field is gloriously open- I am including everything from Trotsky's house in Mexico, Freud's library in London, and Anne Frank's Annex to the Hareem in Topkapi palace, the reconstructed Amber Room, Pompeii, and preserved rooms in Chernobyl.

And then there's Churchill's War Room, the Stasi Chief's Office in Berlin, and more and more and more. The rooms can be personal or impersonal, and they don't have to involve famous people or empires. I'd be especially interested in suggestions located in non-Western countries.

Thank you so much for any and all suggestions!

By: mkb

mkb — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:28:29 -0800

Norman Rockwell's studio in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

By: nasreddin

nasreddin — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:30:16 -0800

In the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, there are the rooms (transplanted, I think) of several Parisian writers, including Marcel Proust.

By: nasreddin

nasreddin — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:31:44 -0800

Here's a better view (use the scrollbar).

By: junkbox

junkbox — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:46:46 -0800

Hemingway's Writing Studio in Key West

By: crush-onastick

crush-onastick — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:55:06 -0800

I used to sit in the Peacock Room in the Freer and study when I was in law school. The Peacock Room was once the dining room in the London home of Frederick R. Leyland, a wealthy shipowner from Liverpool, England, designed by Thomas Jeckyll, decorated by James McNeill Whistler. The feud between Leyland & Whistler is legendary.

By: flibbertigibbet

flibbertigibbet — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:11:09 -0800

Lyon's Center of Deportation and Resistance used to be the place where Lyon's gestapo, under Klaus Barbi, tortured resisters and undesirables (Jews etc.). While most of the building is a museum, at least one of the dungeons is still empty and is 'frozen in time.'

By: gudrun

gudrun — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:18:34 -0800

The Soane may fit your criteria, also, Edna St. Vincent Millay's house Steepletop.

By: rongorongo

rongorongo — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:23:42 -0800

In the UK we have a few ex-cold war "secret bunkers" like this one. They were command centres for national government in the event of a nuclear strike.

By: kimdog

kimdog — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:57:15 -0800

There are the abandoned "ghost" stations in the NYC subway system.

By: misanthropicsarah

misanthropicsarah — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:08:56 -0800

are you interested in "recreations"? if so, there's hdt's cabin at walden pond.

By: misanthropicsarah

misanthropicsarah — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:11:32 -0800

there's also the alhambra in spain. it's a tourist attraction now, but so are most of the things people are listing. does that defeat your "not in use now" clause?

By: LionIndex

LionIndex — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:18:46 -0800

Edgar Allen Poe's room at the University of Virginia, where he was briefly a student.

By: dirtynumbangelboy

dirtynumbangelboy — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:40:54 -0800

The Diefenbunker?

By: unbearablylight

unbearablylight — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:44:32 -0800

Francis Bacon's studio: In 1998, the artist's studio was donated to the Hugh Lane gallery in Dublin, Ireland who painstakingly transferred the walls, floor, ceiling etc. along with over 7000 individual items and recreated the room within the gallery.

By: pines

pines — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:23:03 -0800

The Painted Gallery in the Caves at Lascaux in France.

Ok, perhaps a cave is not the kind of conventional room you were thinking of, but it's frozen in time (16,000 years ago). It was used for a purpose and while there are theories, nobody knows what the purpose was with any real confidence.

By: platinum

platinum — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:35:35 -0800

Napoleon's apartment in the Louvre

By: bottlebrushtree

bottlebrushtree — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:39:24 -0800

Mark Twain's writing / snooker room at the Mark Twain house in Hartford ,CT

By: mumkin

mumkin — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:50:57 -0800

The Kam Wah Chung museum in John Day, Oregon is a fascinating snapshot of what was once the hub of the Chinese-American community in a frontier town.

By: foxy_hedgehog

foxy_hedgehog — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:04:56 -0800

Aamzing. I had no idea. Brilliant and thanks thus far, keep them coming if you can...

By: saucy

saucy — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:05:31 -0800

William Faulkner's Rowan Oak (Oxford, MS) is pretty interesting. He wrote plotlines for a novel on the walls of his study, pretty cool to see.

By: charlesv

charlesv — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:07:10 -0800

Aaron Spelling's gift wrapping room.

By: Dr.Pill

Dr.Pill — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:19:22 -0800

David Rodinsky's room could do with a dusting.

By: Biblio

Biblio — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:16:01 -0800

The Worcester (MA) Art Museum has a French Medieval Chapter House. I think a lot of art museums have rooms that have been assembled in them.

By: bubukaba

bubukaba — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:01:04 -0800

Oh man, this isn't an answer, but if you're interested in this you should see Fritz Lang's Secret Beyond the Door (1948), which includes a character who physically collects preserved rooms, as well as much creepiness and pseudopsychoanalysis.

By: foxy_hedgehog

foxy_hedgehog — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 03:40:52 -0800

Thanks everyone- and thanks, bubukaba, for that Lang reference- I'd never heard of the movie.

By: KimG

KimG — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:59:44 -0800

Not a single room as such, but the 3 story bunker of Erich Honecker north of Berlin is certainly worthwhile to see while you can - 2 months yet until they burry it forever!

By: foxy_hedgehog

foxy_hedgehog — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 02:01:48 -0800

Uncanny! I'm touring the Honecker bunker on Monday.