TOMORROW, Sat. Jan 6, is the last day of COLISEUM BOOKS in NYC

Hacker, at an earlier location:
http://www.gettyimages.com/pictures/seymour-hacker-in-his-shop-381-bleecker-street-greenwich-news-photo-474378939

Shakespeare & Co. One left? At 939 Lexington Avenue (69th)
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/13/nyregion/a-shakespeare-co-to-exit-the-scene.html
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/63728-is-shakespeare-co-in-danger-of-extinction.html
http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2014/05/shakespeare-co.html

Still there
Three Lives & Company 154 W 10th

http://www.threelives.com/

Used to have the devil of a time finding it because I could never remember what intersection it was at and it is located in an area where a lot of slanted streets converge. I see now on the map there there is sort of a rhombus bounded by 7th Ave, Greenwich Ave, 6th Ave and W 4th Street, with Christopher as a diagonal, W10th, Charles and Perry running parallel to it in the upper triangle and Washington an altitude of the lower triangle with 6th Avenue as base and Waverly running parallel to Washington.

Ah, but Waverly has two sections that intersect, one including a "spur." The other part of Waverly runs parallel to an altitude in the upper triangle with Christopher as base which doesn't correspond to any street.

(This is what happens when you grow up in a city and feel like looking at a map is for outsiders)

Three Lives is endangered.

Ugh.

Walked in there the other day. Couldn't get myself to bring this up with the staff.

But really came to post, that I finally figured out, it came to me in the middle of the night a few days ago, the name of the bookstore/cardshop near where I grew up in Queens, where I spent a lot of time when I was coming up. I had been thinking about it for months, had no way of finding it out, I was even going to contact Will Hermes, who I believe lived near there as well, and ask if he remembered, even though I don't know him.

Finally the name came to me

in the middle of that night at 3 or 4 AM. An interior voice said to me the name of this store, which was the name of a chain that now seems to have exactly one outlet. And the name of this chain was:
Womrath or Womrath's.

Ah, I see through google books that there is a nice book with photos of this bookstore and lots of other Art Deco buildings built around the same era called Fresh Meadows, by Fred Cantor and ‎Debra L. Davidson. Only some of them were Art Deco by the time I was coming up.

Art Bookstore on 57th was Hacker Art Books, 45 W 57th Street

I went there a few times. Strand bought their stock, if memory serves. But Hacker had some kind of afterlife at 248 Flushing Ave in Brooklyn. I wanted to solve this mystery and walked by once, but there was no way to get into the building. The business, whatever it was, is gone now.

Before my time, but some very interesting stuff here about the Eighth Street Bookshop
http://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/positively-eighth-street/

And exactly ten years later give or take a week, will be the last day of BookCourt.

http://gothamist.com/2016/12/06/cobble_hill_bookcourt_rip.php

http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=24UAYW5NFEORE

https://untappedcities.com/2015/08/26/4th-avenue-the-history-of-nycs-book-row/

Here is a list of NYC bookstores circa 1993
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.arts.sf.written/HZvsc7mdkOU

Which mentions the German bookstore off Columbus Circle I mentioned upthread:

Mary S. Rosenberg Bookstore (1841 Broadway, really on 60th a couple of
doors west of Broadway, 212-307-7733)
Large collection of German books, most standard paperback series,
and many used and new hardcover titles in literature, philosophy.
Books stacked all over, but navigable once you figure out the basic
layout.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_S._Rosenberg
https://www.fuerthwiki.de/wiki/index.php/Mary_Rosenberg

Never heard of this place until just came across:
https://www.haaretz.com/life/.premium-the-meshuggener-who-keeps-the-last-n-y-c-yiddish-bookstore-alive-1.5463462

Uh oh Book Culture

RIP the one in the old Endicott location

RONG ROOM

Looks like the Strand is going to move into that Columbus and 82nd sure that once was Endicott & Co. and then a Book Culture.

Also feel kind of weird seeing some American Greetings closed where I used to buy books decades ago.

i've been doing my shopping at unnameable books in prospect heights, they're really knowledgeable and friendly and have a great used poetry and fiction section.

Wow, I'm really surprised to see that Coliseum Books in west midtown was still going in 1998.

...Wait, they were open until 2007 in a 2nd location?? I only remember the one by Columbus Circle.

Did you live in NYC?

I've lived in NYC most of my life, since the late 1980s. I actually worked right next to Bryant park when this thread started and didn't know there was a Coliseum Books there.

Man I wish i had access to a bookstore like this in 2020, i remember some friends used to shit talk this place back in the 80s 90s for being too anonymous/generic but wtf it had the selection, i don't care about atmosphere

It contained multitudes.

Bank Street Bookstore on the Upper West Side.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/83822-coronavirus-shutters-longtime-nyc-children-s-bookstore.html

Moving the bookstore out of the lobby of the school many years ago was an obvious mistake and probably sealed its eventual fate. As was letting Beth Puffer go.

You seem to know a lot about this

I grew up in the neighborhood. The decision to move the store out of the school lobby and into a huge retail space on the corner wasn't to expand the store, it was to free the space in the lobby for a principal's office they could have put anywhere. They went from paying zero rent to paying... I can't remember the figure but it was jaw-dropping.

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/mome/industries/nyc-bookstores.page