The room, before a sittingEarlham, IowaGelatin silverPlate I

September 2026

178 of 210 blocks open

The room, this monthEvery column a day, every row a two-hour blockInk is claimed

Saturday, 3:13 pm in Earlham. Block IV, 2pm to 4pm, is claimed.

A vault is where you keep the thing you intend to last.

This one is a room in Earlham, Iowa. What it keeps is the time you booked.

Photograph to come
The cycEmptyAfternoonPlate II
IThe premise

The Vault is a working studio on the square of a town that Iowa's first millionaire bought the ground for. It is one room, built to be photographed in, and it is not let out by the hour. It is held — block by block — for the people who work in it.

Members reserve it in two-hour blocks, on a fixed grid, released two months ahead on the first of the month. What you are paying for is not the square footage. It is the certainty that the room is yours when you said it would be.

IIMembership

Three tiers. One calendar. The same grid for everyone.

  1. IThe Hockett8 hours a month
  2. IIThe Allen16 hours a month
  3. IIIThe 186832 hours a month

Prices post here first, and in full. We are finishing the last of the numbers.

IIIThe release

December 2026 opens all at once.

Thursday, the first of October, at ten o'clock Central. The whole month, every block, at the same instant. First claim holds.

December 2026 opens in

25
days
18
hours
46
minutes
50
seconds
IVWhere it is

Twenty minutes from Jordan Creek, straight down I-80.

Earlham sits on Interstate 80 at its own exit. There is no county blacktop between you and the door.

VThe archive

1868

Benjamin Franklin Allen — Iowa's first millionaire — bought the land at twenty dollars an acre, and, in the words of the account, “it was understood that he intended to make a town of it.” Six years later his bank collapsed.

Read the archive