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

I was surprised to see a copy of Frank Kogan's book there yesterday, I guess no ILX0rz had been yet.

on my way over

RIP Gotham Book Mart. The Wise Men Sleeps With The Fishes.

And while I'm at it, the clerk told me that Evergreen Video is closing at the end of June ;__;

RIP Strand Bookstore Fulton Street Annex

never get down there...

they are less popular than the main store, and that was great cause you could find books that the main one sold out already

Yes, exactly.

It was also a thousand times more comfortable for browsing than the main one.

too bad

Open until the end of the month and still plenty of good stuff.

Didn't realize Barnes and Noble had recently closed the flagship textbook store.

http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2014/01/barnes-noble-flagship.html?m=1

yeah that's a pity

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/nyregion/its-leaving-57th-street-but-rizzoli-bookstore-vows-sequel.html

Which you probably already knew about, maybe from the J&R thread.

Came to this thread because I found an old receipt from

COLISEUM BOOKS
1771 Broadway, NY NY 10019 212-757-8381

Pub Overstock (Yellow Label) 10% OFF
                          THANK YOU !!!

Meanwhile noticed that Rizzoli Bookstore will be reopening at new location: https://rizzolibookstore.com/events/
and will remark that The newish Macnally Robinson on Prince st is still going strong under its more recent name, McNally Jackson: http://mcnallyjackson.com/

Posman Books in Grand Central packin' the customers in (final days)

http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2014/12/posman-books.html

Are there any Posman's left, the one at NYU seems to be gone for a while. Oh I see one in Chelsea (75 9th Avenue) and one at 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

And in Chelsea, is Paula Cooper's bookstore still there? Ah yes, 192 Books,192 Tenth Avenue at 21st Street.

New Rizzoli bookstore location is at 1133 Broadway (26th Street). Haven't been, just read about by clicking through to website.

Seems like Book Culture opened a new store at 450 Columbus Avenue, between 81st and 82nd, which is where Endicott Booksellers used to be.

End of Endicott mentioned here

Bookstores whose continued existence I confirmed by non-internet means:
Housing Works Bookstore Cafe, 126 Crosby Street
Book Court, 163 Court Street (Cobble Hill)
Community Bookstore, 212 Court Street, is also still there, sort of, having its going out of business sale.

McNally Jackson, 52 Prince St, which has a new branch scheduled to open up at the South Street Seaport

Haven't been in a while, but Kinokuniya still seems to still be there at 1073 Avenue of the Americas, between 40th and 41st Streets, across from Bryant Park.

See signs for this place on lampposts all over town offering language lessons, Spanish or French but looks like they have others, only ever stepped foot in their Cobble Hill location at 249 Warren Street once and never in the Manhattan location which has now apparently moved to 170 7th Avenue South, at the corner of Perry Street, http://idlewildbooks.com/.

Charming little place that is long gone:
Tell-Tale Books, 314 Sackett Street (Carroll Gardens)

Somewhere I still have a bookmark from there, with a Sherlock Holmes style magnifying glass on it.

Gone since 1997,
Books & Co, 939 Madison Avenue,
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/26/nyregion/books-and-company-on-east-side-to-close-down.html
http://archives.nypl.org/mss/4804
The NYPL link is quite interesting.
You can also buy some kind of book about it- perhaps vanity press ? - from, um, one of the usual online suspects.
Went there as a custom when I was in there area, only remember going to one reading, David Lodge reading from Paradise News.

Had almost forgotten this place
The Madison Avenue Bookshop, between 69th and 70th
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/17/nyregion/after-30-years-cozy-bookstore-gets-to-the-end.html

Long gone Latino mainstays on 14th Street
Macondo, 221 W 14th Street
Libreria Lectorum, 137 W 14th Street

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/24/books/24span.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/latino/adios-macondo-article-1.256479
http://www.nydailynews.com/latino/latino-bookstores-turning-page-article-1.260825

The Drama Bookstore (250 W. 40th) is holding on.

Loved Coliseum on 57th back in the day.

Have still not been to this swanky new French bookstore:
Albertine, 972 Fifth Avenue, between E 78th and E 79th.
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/albertine-reparue-french-bookshop-new-york
http://www.coolhunting.com/culture/albertine-french-embassy-bookstore-new-york

Librairie de France, 610 Fifth Avenue on Rockefeller Center, closed in 2009
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/longlived-french-bookstore-in-rockefeller-center-to-close/

Has anyone been to the new Rizzoli on bway and 26?

No intending to go there soon when I get a chance and perhaps Idlewild as well.

Used to be a French perhaps French and Spanish bookstore on 5th quite near the main Barnes & Noble store but I can't quite remember its name or location. I believe its inventory was taken over by Librairie de France.
There was also a German language bookstore inside an office building a block or two north of Columbus Circle (you had to take an elevator), staffed by a charming elderly lady and a cat. (You could call the owner, Tom something, in Westchester, I think, if you really needed a special order) One time they put my purchase in a kind of used interoffice mailer, the previous recipient or sender being De NIro's assistant Jane R, who a friend of mine had worked for a little before that time.

The Juilliard Store has been moving since they have been doing all the work on Lincoln Center these past years, used to be on the upper level near the Walter Reade theater, think it is now on street level near the cafe in the film center called indie food and wine. Ah no, in basically the same location on block north, 144 W 66th Street (cafe at 144 W 65th)

A friend of mine lost his virginity getting picked up by a much older woman in the Upper East Side B&N when he was a teenager.

Sales Annex mentioned in this old Columbia university roundup- "Bibliophilia" etc-
http://spectatorarchive.library.columbia.edu/cgi-bin/columbia?a=d&d=cs19780216-01.1.8&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN------#
Was on 17th and Fifth, must still have been there in 1994
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/12/nyregion/new-yorkers-co-359351.html

Columbia Spectator also mentions a Brentano's at 20 University Place, which I remember, and a chain called Marlboro Books, which I have no recollection of.

Ah, I had forgotten The Madison Avenue Bookshop was responsible for this:
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/04/09/books/5-year-old-southern-novel-enjoys-a-sales-boom.html

Another bookstore on Madison at 81st, Burlington, that I am afraid I don't really recall
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/16/nyregion/neighborhood-report-manhattan-up-close-more-bookstore-casualties.html
Article also mentions Endicott, as does
http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2014/09/02/an-independent-bookstore-rises-on-the-upper-west-side/

Untitled (Fine Art In Print), 159 Prince Street, gone since 2006
http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2009/03/untitled-dogs.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/style/home%20and%20garden/currents-postcards-wish-you-were-here-customers-after.html

Spring Street Books, 169 Spring Street
http://www.sohobooks.net/gallery/

Art Bookstore on 57th was Hacker Art Books, 45 W 57th Street
apparently aka Strand-Hacker or Hacker-Strand
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/24/nyregion/s-hacker-83-book-dealer-in-new-york.html

Pageant Print Shop still exists in some form
http://leshistorymonth.org/2015/03/31/pageant-print-shop/
http://nymag.com/listings/stores/pageant-print-shop/
http://lostnewyorkcity.blogspot.com/2007/02/pageant-prints-livesand-so-does.html
but rare books part of business now on-line only

German Book Center located in Mountain Dale, not Westchester. No further zooming in on NYC Columbus Circle area location.

Okay, 1841 Broadway (W 60th)

Seymour Hacker obit quite interesting.

A little more about Hacker
http://www.nysun.com/arts/still-life-in-the-art-book-trade/885/
In which article

Ursus Books, 699 Madison Avenue

is mentioned still in business

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