A Tour of the Grandest Buildings in Literature

As a child, my family would travel to England every three years to visit relatives, driving from one end of the country to the other. To keep my brother and me from killing each other in the back seat, my parents would stop at grand estates, castles, and ruins along the way. I marveled at the generations of families and servants who’d once inhabited these places, and I mine that same curiosity in my novels, which are all set in iconic New York City buildings: the Barbizon Hotel for Women, the Dakota apartment house, and, in my latest, The Masterpiece, at Grand Central Terminal.

The authors of the five novels below also spin their plots around magnificent buildings, from a grand cathedral in the Middle Ages to a modernist glass house, offering up a fascinating link between architecture and storytelling.

Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth

Ken Follett’s genre switch from thriller to historical fiction was inspired by a visit Peterborough Cathedral in England, where he was stunned not only by its beauty, but its very existence. Why was it built, and by whom? And how on earth did Middle Age artisans create this grand monument to God? His intensive research into construction methods, from pointed arch to flying buttress, is fully realized in the fictional Kingsbridge Cathedral, which acts as an anchor in his sweeping saga. The cathedral rises in fits and starts over four decades, the ominous cracks snaking up its curved vault a reflection of the harshness and unpredictability of the 12th century. The journey of construction, ruin, and restoration is deftly folded into the tale of intrigue and bitter power struggles among monks, earls, and kings.

Simon Mawer, The Glass Room

In Mawer’s book, which begins in the late 1920s, a wealthy newlywed couple named Landauer commission an architect to design their dream house on a steep hillside in Czechoslovakia. The structure is a testament to modernity: white floors, plate glass walls, chrome pillars, and a partition made from a slab of onyx. “The soft light of detachment and reason. The future. Pure sensation,” explains the architect. The house in Mawer’s novel is based on Villa Tugendhat, an early work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, located in what’s now the Czech Republic.

The Landauer House represents a new world order, one that disdains heavy ornamentation and the romanticism of the past, but the cool splendor of the design is no protection from the impending threat of political violence. The owners open their house to refugees fleeing persecution, before becoming refugees themselves. As the property is buffeted by brutal forces, seized by first the Gestapo, then the Soviets, its new inhabitants must also adapt to the shifting tides of luck and loss. At times abandoned and bombed, defiled and shattered, the Landauer House, with its expansive view and glass walls, nevertheless remains a place for petty jealousies, solace, and even love.

Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

Thornfield Hall is described a “fine old hall, rather neglected of late years” by the housekeeper Mrs. Fairfax in Brontë’s novel. Its exterior is handsome enough—three stories high, with battlements around the top that give it a picturesque look—but the interior reflects the desolate outlook of its master, particularly the long, cold gallery on the second floor, which offers up “cheerless ideas of space and solitude.” In contrast, Brontë softens Mrs. Fairfax’s sitting room to reflect her warm personality—it’s a snug, small chamber with a cheerful fire and a cat at the housekeeper’s feet.

Brontë is said to have visited two manor houses in the 1830s and 1840s, both of which claim to be the inspiration behind Thornfield Hall: North Lees Hall in the Peak District, which has the requisite battlements and whose first owner, a lunatic named Agnes, was apparently kept locked in a padded room, and Norton Conyers, in North Yorkshire, which has a hidden door up to the attic and its own requisite madwoman (there seem to have been plenty to go around, unfortunately). Luckily for Jane, true love rises out of the blackened ruins of Thornfield Hall, a dramatic end to the Gothic tale.

Stephen King, The Shining

No doubt The Shining did for grand alpine hotels what Spielberg’s Jaws did for a swim in the ocean: ruin a gorgeous vacation spot with the unseen threat of danger. King was inspired the write the story after an eerie, late-season stay with his wife at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. Under King’s deft command, The Shining’s Overlook Hotel isn’t just a setting for the story, it becomes the very embodiment of evil.

Jack, his wife, and young son arrive as the hotel is emptying out for the season, to look after the place during the unforgiving winter ahead. Jack’s son is able to see beyond the luxurious trappings—the silk wallpaper and thick blue hallway runners—to the real horror within. Soon enough, the family becomes caught up in the violent past of the hotel, part of an endless time loop where the building preys upon its inhabitants. Toss in a creeping topiary and a boiler threatening to blow, and let the mayhem begin.

Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

Brideshead Castle, with its small chapel and eccentric inhabitants, is a manifestation of several of the themes Waugh explores in his 1945 novel, including the wavering importance of Catholicism and the British aristocracy in the modern world. The idea for Brideshead Revisited was inspired by Waugh’s long stays at Madresfield Court, the stately Worcestershire home of a college friend, whose family mirrors that in Waugh’s plot, including a banished patriarch and a mix of lively if troubled siblings.

Waugh writes in his foreword that he was quite certain that houses like Madresfield would eventually end up in ruin. Brideshead Revisited was his effort to memorialize the legacy of the grand manor house, from the point of view of outsider Charles Ryder, who early on declares his love for “buildings that grow silently with the centuries.” From the grand colonnade to the water fountain decorated with carved animals, Brideshead Castle evokes envy and nostalgia, as Charles gets an education, both emotional and aesthetic, at the estate. Even when the grounds are overrun by a military brigade, a small lamp in the chapel still burns brightly, Waugh’s quiet beacon of hope in a troubled world.