The bookseller at the door in 1940s Greenwich Village

The photo, by Berenice Abbott, invites mystery. “Hacker Book Store, Bleecker Street, New York” is the title, dated 1945. Who is the pensive man at the door—and where on Bleecker Street is this?

The answer to the latter question is 381 Bleecker Street, near Perry Street in the West Village. As for the pensive man, it’s likely Seymour Hacker, a bookseller well-known enough in a more literate New York City that he merited a detailed obituary in the New York Times in 2000 when he died at age 83.

“A small, bright-eyed man fluent in four languages, Mr. Hacker was one of the last booksellers to learn his trade from the bookmen whose stores and stands once lined Fourth Avenue between Astor Place and 14th Street,” wrote Roberta Smith. “Born on the Lower East Side in 1917, he grew up in the Bronx and began haunting Fourth Avenue when he was 12.” 

Hacker opened his first bookstore in 1937. “Noting that fine art books were in especially great demand, he opened Hacker Art Books at 381 Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village in 1946, moving uptown in 1948. Customers included Delmore Schwartz, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mr. Hacker’s friend Zero Mostel,” stated Smith. “Uptown” took Hacker to 57th Street.

Another mystery: why Abbott chose Hacker and his store as the subject for one of her photographs.

[Photo: MCNY: 2014.90.1]

Tags: Berenice Abbott Hacker Book Store, Berenice Abbott Photos Greenwich Village, Hacker Book Store Berenice Abbott, Hacker Book Store Bleecker Street, Old Bookstores Bleecker Street NYC