A NYT piece on the 26th, “Literary City, Bookstore Desert: Surging Rents Force Booksellers From Manhattan” by Julie Bosmanmarch”. Highlights:
Rising rents in Manhattan have forced out many retailers, from pizza joints to flower shops. But the rapidly escalating cost of doing business there is also driving out bookstores, threatening the city’s sense of self as the center of the literary universe, the home of the publishing industry and a place that lures and nurtures authors and avid readers.
“Sometimes I feel as if I’m working in a field that’s disappearing right under my feet,” said the biographer and historian Robert Caro, who is a lifelong New Yorker.
The Rizzoli Bookstore was recently told that it would be forced to leave its grand space on 57th Street because the owners decided that the building would be demolished.
Oh my, Rizzoli, a beloved monument to books.
Where do you go now to look at, handle, and sample physical books? (I can recommend an excellent bookstore in Perry NY, but that’s out of the way for most readers here.)
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