We love our independent book stores. Urban Daughter teaches English and I worked as a librarian for the last portion of my non-writing career. We now have multiple generations of readers and book collectors. It would be hard for our family to imagine downtown without Union Avenue Books and, more recently, the lovely Addison’s Books. It’s hard to imagine Knoxville without the bustling McKays.
What would a city be with only corporate book stores and Amazon? We almost found out a few years ago when major chain book stores seemed so unstoppably dominant. Even Nashville, a much larger city, was without an independent book store for a hot minute until author Ann Patchett opened Parnassus Books in 2011. France protects its independent book stores as cultural heritage spaces, sometimes subsidizing them and always protecting them from unfair competition like Amazon.
Urban Daughter often develops a little theme for our New York City summer visit and this year she announced we would tour independent bookstores. We’d planned to include Brooklyn, but that proved too ambitious. Still, we visited bookstores up and down Manhattan, from SoHo to Chelsea and the Upper East Side. The range of what we found was delightful, sometimes setting us off on little side literary adventures. We never made it to the most famous and largest independent bookstore in the city, Strand Bookstore, but we’ve been there a number of times.
Our first stop was in our own neighborhood at Three Lives and Company. It would turn out to be our favorite and a spot we will return on each trip. We both found books, which for me included a signed Patti Smith (Year of the Monkey) and and a copy of The Village by John Strausbaugh, a 550 page book on the history of Greenwich Village, which I started reading on the trip and have loved since returning. It also led to a couple of detours later.
I would read that Edgar Allan Poe lived briefly (as he did everywhere he lived) a block off Washington Square. Sadly, after a preservation battle to save the “Poe House,” NYU knocked it down. As a bizarre tip of the hat to those opposed to the demolition, they inlaid a mismatched brick in the new building at the spot where the old building stood. A door leads to an exhibit they open once a week for two hours on Thursday mornings.
I also learned that Thomas Paine died in the Village, a broken, mostly forgotten, and somewhat reviled man. Six people attended his funeral and his body was later exhumed and its parts were sold to collectors. Quite a sad ending to the life of the author of the very influential Common Sense. Then came a shocker: He died June 8, 1809, meaning the day after I read the fact, he died just around the corner 215 years earlier. The least we could do was visit the spot and acknowledge the poor guy on his death anniversary in the building beside Marie’s Crisis Tavern. And so we did.
Urban Daughter picked up a copy of Patti’s Just Kids, the first of her eleven books for the trip. She would later find a signed hardback copy of Just Kids and, naturally, buy it too. The reason for the Patti Smith focus (beyond her brilliance) is the fact that Patti has long lived in Greenwich Village. A check of Patti’s very active Instagram account indicated she was in town and had been at Electric Lady (Jimi Hendrix’ studio) studios the day before. We had to go, of course, and discovered it was on the reverse side of our block right next to the stationary store we’d visited the same day she was there. We later learned she came to the stationary store after visiting the studio. We just missed her.
Continuing our tour of book stores, we spent time at McNally Jackson Books, both at the Rockefeller Plaza location in midtown and the (better) SoHo location. Also in SoHo, we also visited the very fine Housing Works Books, which features mostly donated books, as well as donated clothing. Volunteers staff the shop (which is huge) and the proceeds go towards helping HIV patients and combatting homelessness. It’s one we’ll definitely return to.
And then there was Bibliotheque. Also in Soho, this has to be one of our new favorite spots and, in fact, we enjoyed it so much we went there twice. Part book store, part wine bar, part art gallery, part restaurant, the place has a lot going on. Patrons are encouraged to bring books to read (which we did on our first visit) or to pull one from the shelves. We hit the first time at a perfect time for a cold glass at the bar while we read.
It was during that first visit that we continued talking about Patti Smith (which Urban Daughter was reading by now) and I remembered a statue of Cervantes that Patti referenced in her wonderful Book of Days that had been my Father’s Day present last year. She said:
One Fall morning, I found the locked gate left open to Willy’s Memorial Garden, just north of Washington Square Park, more an alley than a courtyard. There, before a wall of silvery ivy and inkberries, was a statue of Meguel de Cervantes, creator of Don Quixote, dreamer of dreams.
We had to find him and of course, later we did, tucked away just like she said. A gift from Spain to New York City, the statue originally resided in Bryant park, but was moved to this spot when the city gave it to NYU. Of course, that led Urban Daughter to assume a quest to find Don Quixote on the same visit to New York City that we found Cervantes and, eventually, she did just that.
Meanwhile, we read, enjoyed our cold beverages, and sat at the bar across the room from a drawing by Matisse among other great artists. We returned a few days later for dinner and didn’t love the food, but loved being surrounded by books with other book lovers (many of whom seemed to be on first dates — and what better place for a first date than a beautiful space surrounded by books, wine, and art?
We stopped into Posman Books inside Chelsea Market on our day there. We spent most of another day in the upper east side hitting bookstores, including several notable ones. We stopped into Shakespeare and Company, which was the first time I realized there were locations outside the one in Paris, but then I can’t find anything online that connects them, so I’m confused. I’ve included my 2011 photo from our trip there, as well as the newer one. It turns out the “new” store opened in 1983, so not so new. I prefer the old one, which opened in Paris in 1951.
We also stopped into the lovely The Corner Bookstore, also in the upper east side and where, I believe, Urban Daughter found her Cervantes. And then there were two book stores that proved to be pretty special. One serves up antiquarian books including some very rare editions, in addition to other collectibles like autographs. It was there in Argosy Bookstore that we found a very old and rare set of books each featuring a section of Don Quixote. It was meant to be! Seen that is, not purchased. We aren’t those people. Still, it was cool just seeing it after all our conversation about Cervantes.
The coolest bookstore? The most beautiful? Well, leave it to the aforementioned French. We really didn’t know what we were getting into when we searched for and eventually found Albertine Books.
The first clue that you are into something special is the small statue of The Little Prince sitting on the garden wall outside the Villa Albertine’s Payne Whitney Mansion at 972 Fifth Avenue. The villa is home to the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the statue was placed just last year. The sculpture by French sculptor Jean-Marc de Pas honors the book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry on the 80th anniversary of its publication. The book was written in New York City during Saint-Exupéry’s time there.
And this is just the beginning to the stunning space inside which houses books in French and English (but mostly French). It features over 14,000 titles of contemporary and classic works from thirty French speaking countries. Of the reason for its presence, the site says beautifully:
As an integral part of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, the Albertine bookshop brings to life the French government’s commitment to French-American intellectual exchange. The space reflects its belief in the power of literature and the humanities to increase understanding and friendship across borders, and in the power of books as a common good for a better world.
And isn’t that the heart of all bookstores? I’ll stop at this beautiful space and encourage you to track down independent book stores wherever you are and give them some love. Elevate them as they elevate us all.