Manhattan has always had its neighborhoods of commerce and industry, from the Garment Center to the Pickle District.
And like those two vestiges of the late 19th century city, a booksellers’ district also popped up, this one on the warehouse blocks along Fourth Avenue south of Union Square.
“That quarter-mile section of Fourth Avenue which lies between the Bible House [at Astor Place] and the vista of Union Square has been for more than forty years the habitat of many dealers of old books,” noted Publishers’ Weekly in 1917.
That means Booksellers’ Row—the fabled enclave where book vendors and lovers came together in dusty storefronts, buying and selling hidden treasures—dates back to the 1870s.
Thanks to the presence of many book publishing offices, “it admittedly is now the ‘Booksellers’ Row’ of the metropolis,” the article proclaimed.
Booksellers’ Row attracted bibliophiles and casual browsers for decades; in the 1950s, more than 40 general and specialty shops lured reader to their mazes of shelves.
These black and white photos, from the 1930s and 1940s, convey mystery and solitude.
Who are these serious-looking readers, picking through bins and piles on tables while the rest of the city thunders along, pursuing progress and profit?
In the 1950s, Booksellers’ Row was on the wane. It was the usual culprit, of course: increasing rents.
“This is their plight: They can exist only in low-rental shops, yet they need tremendous storage space,” wrote the New York Times in a 1956 piece on the dilemma of selling books in New York City.
By the 1970s, many stores were gone or on the way out, or “scattering” to other parts of the city, as the Times seemed to predict. The article featured a prescient last paragraph:
“The Commissioner [of the city’s department of commerce and public events], something of a sentimentalist, thinks he can prevent this scattering.
“He thinks New York must never go so modern that it must ride roughshod over these mellow places.
“He thinks something essential dies when that happens,” the Times stated.
Today the Strand, opened in 1927 on Fourth Avenue and now on Broadway and 12th Street, is the only old-timer remaining.
[Top photo: Mosk’s, Astor Place, 1935, MCNY; second photo: Schulte’s, Fourth Ave and 10th Street, NYPL; third photo: browsers on Fourth Ave, NYPL; fourth photo: Books and Stationary on Fourth Ave and 11th Street, NYPL; fifth photo: The Strand, 1938; sixth photo: 13th and Fourth Ave, 1930, NYPL]
Tags: Book Row New York City, Booksellers Row NYC, Fourth Ave Book Row, Mosk's Books Fourth Ave, New York photo 1930s, Schulte's Books Fourth Ave, The Strand Book Row
June 6, 2016 at 10:50 am |
Jeff Bezos killed these places. A pox on him.
June 6, 2016 at 11:26 am |
A main reason the bookstores were centered there was the presence of several book manufacturers. e.g. on Astor Place, who sold their over-production to these stores.
June 6, 2016 at 2:07 pm |
They were gone before Amazon – I remember it was still happening in the late “60s
June 7, 2016 at 12:19 am |
The large bookstore chains was the first big wave of untenable competition. Amazon finished them off.
June 7, 2016 at 3:00 am |
Reblogged this on wack60585.
June 7, 2016 at 4:18 pm |
Do you think there will ever be a Kindle Row ?
Maybe in hell.
June 18, 2016 at 7:22 pm |
Amazon had nothing to do with the demise of these stores, which carried used and antiquarian books only. They were done in by real estate values, which soared for this formerly forgotten area starting in the 1960s and 70s.
One of the stores, Biblo & Tannen, was run by Jack Blblo and Jack Tannen, who wisely bought their building. When they retired and closed up shop, they sold the place for lots of money. Tannen retired to Florida, Biblo to his house on Middagh Street in Brooklyn Heights. He had a small bookstore on the corner of Middagh and Hicks, Biblo Books, open only on weekends. That store is now an architect’s office.
Biblo & Tannen also had a small publishing company, Canaveral Press, one of the first publishers to reprint public domain works by Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan, etc.), touching off a wave of reprinting by Ace Books, Ballantine and other mass market publishers.
September 10, 2018 at 10:56 am |
[…] via Solitary browsing on Fourth Avenue’s Book Row — Ephemeral New York […]
March 4, 2019 at 2:28 pm |
[…] according to a count by the city’s best-known bookstore, the Strand, there are fewer than 80. Book Row, a stretch of Fourth Avenue between Union Square and Astor Place that once housed almost 50 used […]
March 4, 2019 at 2:33 pm |
[…] according to a count by the city’s best-known bookstore, the Strand, there are fewer than 80. Book Row, a stretch of Fourth Avenue between Union Square and Astor Place that once housed almost 50 used […]
March 4, 2019 at 2:36 pm |
[…] selon un décompte par la ville le plus connu de la librairie, le Strand, il y a moins de 80. Livre Ligne, un tronçon de la Quatrième Avenue, entre Union Square et à Astor Place qui abritait près de 50 […]
March 6, 2019 at 6:48 pm |
[…] bookstores are a fading attendance in New York City. In 1950, Manhattan had 386 bookstores, Book Row, a elongate of Fourth Avenue between Union Square and Astor Place […]
March 6, 2019 at 10:29 pm |
[…] bookstores are a vanishing presence in New York City. In 1950, Manhattan had 386 bookstores, Book Row, a stretch of Fourth Avenue between Union Square and Astor Place […]
March 11, 2019 at 4:06 am |
[…] bookstores are a vanishing vicinity in New York City. In 1950, Manhattan had 386 bookstores, Book Row, a strain of Fourth Avenue between Union Square and Astor Place […]
May 27, 2019 at 5:58 am |
[…] home of the Eighth Street Bookshop—one of dozens of booksellers centered around Eighth Street or Fourth Avenue that made the Village a bibliophile paradise in the 1950s and […]
December 28, 2020 at 1:49 am |
[…] Instead, Schumacher & Ettlinger appear to be a lithography company that produced labels for cigar boxes. Makes sense based on their address; Fourth Avenue (Park Avenue South today, of course) was in the city’s publishing and booksellers’ district…close to what became known as Booksellers’ Row in the 20th century. […]
December 28, 2020 at 5:23 am |
[…] Instead, Schumacher & Ettlinger appear to be a lithography company that produced labels for cigar boxes. Makes sense based on their address; Fourth Avenue (Park Avenue South today, of course) was in the city’s publishing and booksellers’ district…close to what became known as Booksellers’ Row in the 20th century. […]
December 30, 2020 at 5:27 pm |
The fourth photo, with the spire of Grace Church rising to the west, bears the misleading .png file label: “bookstores1945…” Everything here from the architecture of the buildings to the lettering on the storefronts to the dress of the barely visible human figures suggests the Civil War era or its immediate aftermath.
December 30, 2020 at 6:00 pm |
Since the marble spire of Grace Church was completed in 1884. my estimate of the photo’s date has to be moved forward a few years.