How many books can we fit in there?

When we dreamed up the idea for The Stacks, we knew we wanted to serve great coffee, and we knew that we wanted to be surrounded by books. We worked with our partners at Roseline Coffee, and with a fantastic designer at Orange Design to come up with the layout for our cafe—including space for the counter, coffee equipment, sinks, a tiny kitchen space, seating, and storage. But what about books? Inspired by the library stacks at the University of Texas, where my mother worked when I was a kid, I wanted to recreate the feeling of being surrounded by books, taller than you, on all sides, stretching as far as the eye can see. Every time we looked at another sketch or layout of the space, I asked—is there anywhere we can put another bookshelf? How many books can we fit in there?

We ended up with over 50 feet of 10-foot high bookshelves, including a totally dreamy library ladder. Thousands of books.

We worked with the artist Mike Suri to design the bookshelves, and they ended up being even better than we could have imagined—in addition to being functional, structurally sound, beautiful, and solid, just like Suri Iron. He also made the awesome curved handrail on our entrance ramp, and one of his sculptures has a permanent place of honor on the edge of the raw edge wooden shelf in the entryway. Check out his work! Mike is a working artist and teacher, with some great pubic art around Portland and the Pacific Northwest.

The wood in the bookshelves is from another local favorite, Reclaim NW.