Remembrance of Bookstores – The New York Times


New York City is home to great bookstores, but there used to be a lot more to choose from – from Coliseum Books just south of Columbus Circle; On the Upper West Side to Ivy’s Curiosities and Murder Ink; In the East Village, beloved St. Mark’s Bookstore. According to one count, there were 386 bookstores in Manhattan in 1950, of which about 40 were within a six-block section of Fourth Avenue. (There are currently less than 100 people in town, by comparison.) Here’s a look at a few old favourites.

Dozens of bookstores that once lined Fourth Avenue—so many that in 1969, A Times article about the area “Fourth Avenue is to rare, used and antique books what the Lincoln Center is to music, Broadway is to theatre.” Jack Trinket, co-owner of Trinket & Tannen’s – shown here circa 1940 – Reminded me of the street in 1981He told The Times: “We were all a little weird. When I started, there was an old Russian revolutionary holding a wood stove down the street in the middle of his shop. If he liked you, he would give you a cup of tea. If he didn’t like you, he kicked you out. If he had told you a price and you said you would consider it, he would have doubled the price.”

Lewis H. Michaux stopped preaching to open the Harlem bookstore African National Memorial Bookstore in 1930 and remained a fixture in the community and a center of Black politics and intellectual activity. Until it closed in 1974 after 44 years. “Baby but it’s too heavy for me,” she told The Times.

The Green Book Store, seen here in 1969, was a mainstay of Fourth Avenue.

In a 1962 Times article, author Gay Talese spoke with Richard Kasak and Seymour Rubin, owners of Bookmasters, a Times Square bookstore that stays open all night for “illiterate insomniacs.” Talese writes, “Before Mesrs. Kasak and Rubin decided to open Bookmasters shoulder to shoulder with the torment houses of Broadway, they were warned by their friends that a local bookstore could only survive by selling pornography, girlie magazines, and detective thrillers.” Kasak told Talese: “Well, we’ve proven that this isn’t the case. We do not have one pornographic book in this shop. 42nd Street isn’t as bad as people say it is. Not as bad as Greenwich Village. Here are the maniacs from the Bronx who want to have a good time; those college kids lose control. I feel much safer on 42nd street than in the Village.”

John Moore (left) and Kanya Ke’Kumbha at the Tree of Life Bookstore on 125th Street in Harlem in 1976. The shop, which carried books on metaphysics, astrology, botany, and the occult, was called UCLA for University at Lenox’s Corner. Boulevard. “This is our aim” Ke’Kumbha told The Times in 1976“raising the consciousness levels of our society.”

The Manhattan branch of A Different Light, an iconic gay bookstore chain, closed in 2001. In 1993, the company’s president and co-owner, Norman Laurila, told The Times that some gay literature might find its way to mainstream retailers, his stores. The roles of “cheerleader, social center and political pulse for the gay reading community” could not be replicated.

The Doubleday Bookstore, seen here in 1972, was at Fifth Avenue and 56th Street. In a 2006 Times articleDan Kois wrote: “A special appeal of Doubleday is that, to writer Fran Lebowitz, ‘Midtown is for New Yorkers, not just tourists; You can go there late at night and buy anything.’”

One of the city’s most famous literary fishermen’s shelters, the Gotham Book Mart had several locations in the West 40s. In 1972, when the store’s founder, Frances Steloff, was 85, He showed a Times reporter around and pointing to a shelf, she said, “So instead of sunbathing in Florida, I’m still here—to get more of these books in the hands of young people.”

George Rubin, seen here in the window of his Fourth Avenue bookstore, told The Times in 1969 that he remained optimistic about the book sales business. Books are part of education and “education will never stop,” he said.


Tina Jordan, assistant editor of Book Review. Erica Ackerberg is a photo editor at The Times.



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