#book row

[godzilla-reads]

June 24th, 2021

My mom opened up a shelf for me to put some of my books on. Here I have some I’m currently reading plus some on my TBR. Although, I have more books on the way 👀

[newyorkthegoldenage]

For around 70 years, Fourth Avenue between Astor Place and Union Square was lined with used bookstores. At their peak in the 1920s, there were nearly 50 of them.

The first stores opened around 1890 and soon began to attract others. They were dim, scruffy shops stuffed to the gills with old books, full of that old book fragrance. Most did not sell antiquarian or valuable stuff, but more like the curated contents of attics and thrift shops. Most had bins or carts outside on the street to attract foot traffic and get rid of their hardest-to- sell volumes.

As the stores proliferated, they began to specialize. There was a shop for cookbooks, paperbacks (a novelty back then), theatrical memorabilia, science fiction and the occult. 

The area was a magnet for writers and readers. Robert Frost, Andre Breton, and Jack Kerouac were among those going on bookshop crawls.

You know how the story ends: soaring rents put an end to this only marginally profitable business. Books take up a lot of room, and there are always more in storage. That required a good bit of real estate. Now the last vestige of these shops are Strand Books, a huge store (1 million books, it boasts), which moved one block west to Broadway, and Alabaster Books, a new (ca. 1996) shop on Booksellers Row itself. They hold up the tradition.

Top Photo: Secondhand bookstores on Lower Fourth Avenue. ca. 1941-1953, Andreas Feininger via The Museum of the City of New York.

Second Photo: Biblo & Tannen, one of the last shops to give up the ghost, in a picture by Roy Perry, ca. 1940.

[liliowychlopiec]

Moved my art guides to a more central spot of my shelf (along with my comics) because I needed to rearrange sth while cleaning off dust. It made me realise how much it has grown over the years (and that I already have ordered two more pieces to add) It is also slightly ordered starting from the left with the gift magazines/books to an Aquarelle guide, architecture and perspective, color and build up guides, animal anatomy, nature/plants, human anatomy as well as literature and poetry I use for my ocs.

[godzilla-reads]

“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.” – Fernando Pessoa

[first-ex-wife]

starting to feel like I didn’t photograph enough bookstores in New York…

and I mean that shit UNIRONICALLY

[doonitedin]

सलमान खुर्शीद की किताब और बवाल

सलमान खुर्शीद की किताब और बवाल

      नैनीताल. कांग्रेस के ​वरिष्ठ नेता और पूर्व केंद्रीय मंत्री सलमान खुर्शीद के घर आगजनी और गोलीबारी के मामले में उत्तराखंड पुलिस ने 4 आरोपियों को गिरफ्तार कर लिया है. चंदन सिंह लोधियाल, उमेश मेहता, कृष्ण बिष्ट और राजकुमार मेहता को भवाली पुलिस ने अरेस्ट किया है. साथ ही, इनके पास से 32 बोर का अवैध पिस्टल और मैगजीन भी बरामद की गई है. पुलिस ने सभी आरोपियों को गिरफ्तार कर कोर्ट में पेश किया.…

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[bobonbooks]

Review: Book Row

Book Row, Marvin Mondlin and Roy Meador. New York: Skyhorse, 2019 (originally published in 2003). Summary: A history of Book Row, a collection of used and antiquarian bookstores along and around Fourth Avenue in New York City. Most of us who have loved books for many years have our favorite used and antiquarian bookstores. Many are memories. Others are still operating. Some were in out of the…

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[greemuel]

My first snowfall in New York. | @greemuel