The visual arts are its soul

CeRtain BOOKSTORES make the blood rush as soon as you’ve crossed through the door, especially those with books a bit askew on the shelves they’re weighting down, giving you the sweetly ominous sensation that, any minute now, they’re going to tumble down all around you. There’s always a whiff of some complex, earthy scent you can’t quite take apart, but that you know you’ve smelled only in bookstores -- certain bookstores.

Dutton’s in Brentwood is one such place, a compound of rooms built around a courtyard where customers are trusted to take their unpaid-for books and read, if they want to, without scrutiny. The employees are so at ease with what they appear to assume is your sturdy honor, you can’t imagine anyone ever betraying that old-fashioned expectation by walking off with the goods. You could be in your own private library -- if your library had seven or eight rooms and an espresso bar.

Just off the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica is another bookstore provocative enough to make you forget that you’ve been hanging around since 5:30, and it’s now 7:45 and only the growling of your belly and the numbing of your feet remind you.

Hennessey + Ingalls can hardly be said to be homey, as Dutton’s is homey, at least in its new incarnation. Its appeal is more sexy, in a precise, pulled-together sort of way, more about the simple fact that it’s in a category unto itself. -- a huge, independent bookstore totally devoted to the visual arts. You’ll find it all here: books on architecture, fine arts, interior decoration, gardening, photography, graphic design, fashion design.

Mark Hennessey, the owner, is reasonably certain that his is the largest of its kind in the country, and I don’t doubt it. He guesses that there are about 150,000 books on the shelves, but he has “no idea” exactly how many because -- and I make him repeat this since I can’t believe he’s just said it -- nothing is computerized here at Hennessey + Ingalls. He convinces you that it’s more manageable doing it his way, with cards in the back of the books like libraries used to have. For one thing, he insists, it means that all 17 of his employees eventually get to know what’s in stock.

Late this summer, the store relocated to Wilshire Boulevard, around the corner from the familiar spot it had occupied for 20 years on 3rd Street to a sweeping new space of 8,200 square feet.

The elegant, understated interior was designed by the hot architecture team of Leo Marmol and Ron Radziner, whose main goal was to make it less about the architecture and more about the books -- as well it should be. The only ornamentation or decorative features, in fact, are the books, the rows and rows that ascend 12 feet high on some walls.

Still, one can’t help being aware of the plain efficiency and calm of the architecture, manifested most strikingly in the thick bookshelves that unselfconsciously express the raw, simple beauty of the birch plywood from which they’re made. There is a lovely coherence to Hennessey + Ingalls, a quality nonexistent in most chain stores, and the very satisfying confidence that service is personal, and, if not always warm, at least informed.

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Hennessey + Ingalls is open daily from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. (310) 458-9074, 214 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica.

Barbara King is editor of the Home section. She can be reached at barbara.king@latimes.com.