A Cabinet for the Bicycle
A Combination Bookcase-Bicycle Arrangement with a Strip of Carpet to Wheel Over.
It has every mark of Yankee ingenuity, but there isn't a bit of it in it. It is a bicycle cabinet warranted not to reveal its secret nature to the closest observer, and it is an English invention. The cabinet part of it is ingenious, but the should-be Yankee part is a strip of carpet which can be pulled out at one side and then wound up again with a crank, and when the carpet is out full length the bicycle can be rolled into the room - best parlor, if need be - upon it without injury to the most delicate floor covering.
The cabinet is a bookcase as long and as high as the bicycle. The three lower shelves are bona fide and books can be placed upon them, though they are narrow, but the upper, with the exception of where the carpet crank is, is a sham. Back of it the handlebars go when the bicycle is rolled in at the end, through a door which opens at the side of the cabinet and behind the book shelves.
Where the upper shelf would be in the bookcase there is a long piece of beveled class mirror set in with two short curtains hanging as if over books on either side. At the right side, the end where the wheel goes into the cabinet, the curtain hides a sham shelf, but there is a genuine one at the other end, and in the compartment is the carpet winding crank.
The cabinet is a good thing for the bicycle, which is kept out of the dust, but as for appearances the ordinary bicyclist has usually no objection to having a wheel in plain sight, whether it is in parlor, dining room, or hall.
Things haven't changed much since 1898. I'm an ordinary bicyclist and I have no objection to a wheel in plain sight, even in my best parlor. However I don't have anywhere near the number of bikes stored at the home above!
I find it fun to see what other people do in the Flickr Bike House pool.
Where do you store your bicycle(s)?
