There are rooms in a house that perform. The living room, the kitchen, the primary bedroom — these are the spaces people design for, obsess over, photograph. And then there's the hallway. Mostly it just gets you from one place to another. In my house it does a lot more than that.
The hallway in my 1906 Victorian in Saint Paul is probably the most personal space I've ever lived with. Every wall has something on it. Every object has a story. Some of those stories are mine, some belonged to the house long before I got here. Walking through it feels less like a corridor and more like moving through a record of everywhere I've been, everything I've collected, and everything this house has been through in the last 120 years.
The Main Gallery Wall
This is the one that started everything. I've had a version of this wall in every home I've lived in — San Francisco, Lowertown Saint Paul, and now here. It grows with me. The anchor pieces are three medical illustrations sourced from a medical supply shop in Amsterdam — skull studies, hand studies, and foot studies — alongside my prized memento mori from the same trip. These four pieces are the heart of the wall. Everything else orbits them. If you want the full story on that Amsterdam trip, I wrote about it in my Cabinet of Curiosities post. The butterfly collection has been building for nearly two decades — vintage shops, trips, gifts, eBay at midnight. The mirrors scattered throughout aren't placeholders — they're intentional, reflecting light back into the hall. The Moroccan mirror from Southside Vintage was the most recent addition. A wall that has room to grow is one that stays alive.
Across The Hall
Directly opposite the main gallery wall hangs a single large piece — a skull rendered on a gold leaf background, found at a Lowertown Art Crawl a few years ago. I saw it and immediately knew I had a wall for it. It faces the medical illustrations. The two walls are in conversation with each other, which is exactly the point. The hallway isn't a series of separate decisions. It's one immersive experience.
The Other Side Of The Door
On the same wall as the gallery wall but on the other side of the living room doorway — a Skyride photograph printed on wood and a porthole mirror. Different in tone from the rest of the wall but connected by the same collecting instinct. Things that caught my eye, things with a story, things that felt right.
Opposite The Front Door
Two black and white photographs of a Victorian house in mismatched frames, alongside an antique figural candle sconce. Here's the detail that still gets me: when we moved into this house, we found a box left behind by the previous owners. Inside were photographs documenting the house's progression over more than a century. Those are the photos on this wall. The house's own history, hanging in its own hallway.
To The Left Of The Front Door
A wall anchored by two photographs from the same Lowertown Art Crawl artist — Totality, an eclipse shot, and a pier photograph — both in warm wood frames. Below them, a radiator turned display surface holding objects collected along the way. And tucked in the center, a small framed photograph of Mostar that my husband took on our honeymoon. Never posted, quietly living in the hall.
How To Build A Gallery Wall That Doesn't Look Like Everyone Else's
Since I get asked about this constantly, here's how I actually do it.
Start with an anchor. Every gallery wall needs at least one piece that everything else organizes around — not necessarily the largest, but the most meaningful. Mine is the memento mori and the three medical illustrations from Amsterdam. Yours might be something completely different. It just has to mean something. When it does, every piece you add after has something to talk to.
Let it evolve. The best gallery walls are never finished. Don't fill every inch just because you can. Leave room for what you haven't found yet.
Have a plan before you touch the wall. Before a single nail goes in, I lay everything out on the floor. I take measurements, figure out the arrangement, and live with it for a bit. Some people prefer the butcher paper method — tracing each frame and taping it to the wall to preview placement. Both work. Winging it does not.
Use Command strips for smaller pieces. No unnecessary nail holes, easy to adjust, keeps the wall from looking like it's been through a battle.
Mix your frames. Black frames, wood frames, ornate gilded frames, mirrors, objects that aren't technically frames at all. The variety is what makes it feel collected rather than purchased.
Let the wall have a personality. The No Riff Raff sign mounted above the doorway at the end of the hall isn't technically part of the gallery wall. But it sets the tone for everything in it. That's the whole idea.
The Point
A hallway that looks like everyone else's is usually one that has a console table, a mirror, and nothing else. The ones that stop people are built over time, around things that actually matter to the person who lives there. This one took twenty years, three cities, a trip to Amsterdam, a Lowertown Art Crawl, a honeymoon in Bosnia, and a box of old photographs left behind by strangers who loved the same house before we did.
