Book Row: An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade [Hardcover]

Marvin Mondlin (Author), Roy Meador (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 24, 2003

The city has eight million stories, and this one unfolds just south of 14th Street in Manhattan, mostly on the seven blocks of Fourth Avenue bracketed by Union Square and Astor Place. There, for nearly eight decades, from the 1890s to the 1960s, thrived the New York Booksellers’ Row, or, more commonly, Book Row. This illustrated memoir features historical photographs and is richly anecdotal, and as American as the rags-to-riches tale of the Strand, which began its life as a book stall on Eighth Street and today houses 2.5 million volumes in twelve miles of space. A story cast with colorful characters: like the book dealer George D. Smith; the irascible Russian-born book hunter Peter Stammer, the visionary Theodore C. Schulte; Lou Cohen, founder of the still-surviving Argosy Book Store; gentleman bookseller George Rubinowitz and his legendarily shrewish wife, Jenny, Book Row remembers names and places that all lovers, readers, buyers, sellers, and collectors of books should never forget. Rising rents, street crime, urban redevelopment, television are many of the reasons for the demise of Book Row, but in this volume, based on interviews with dozens of the people who bought, sold, and collected there, it lives again.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Between 1890 and the 1960s, a bustling trade in used and rare books flourished in New York City along Fourth Avenue, between Union Square and Astor Place. Although the stores that once prospered on this little stretch of street have long since closed, the memories of the halcyon days of the bookselling trade in the city still live in the minds of former customers and store employees. Drawing on interviews and on seminal articles published in the early- and mid-20th century, Mondlin (estate buyer at the Strand) and book collector Meador vividly re-create the passion, wonder and adventure of the book trade as it developed along Book Row. The authors paint portraits of the booksellers who established the Row and who secured its reputation among book lovers. There is George D. Smith, the shrewd but gentlemanly book collector who helped Henry E. Huntington build his own library. Called by many "the greatest American bookdealer," Smith provided an example of the persistence and keen insight into the value of books that became the hallmark of the stores on Book Row. The authors also chronicle other dealers such as Eleanor Lowenstein, whose Corner Book Shop specialized in cookbooks; David Kirschenbaum, who developed a stellar collection of Walt Whitman that formed the foundation of the Library of Congress's collection; and Harry Gold, whose Aberdeen Book Company was the first among the antiquarian stores on Book Row to feature paperbacks, in the 1920s. The authors also reminisce about favorite stores, such as Albert F. Goldsmith's At the Sign of the Sparrow, which specialized in theater memorabilia and which very likely provided the setting for mystery writer Carolyn Wells's Murder in the Bookshop. Mondlin and Meador's affectionate paean to the denizens and dealers of Book Row brings to life the glory days of one of New York City's greatest bygone treasures.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

For about 100 years, secondhand bookstores clustered on Fourth Avenue in New York City between Union Square and Astor Place. Their names read like an incantation: Samuel Weiser, Dauber & Pine, Biblio & Tannen, the Abbey, the Raven, the Corner. They are mostly gone now, save the Strand, whose mighty 16 miles of books are still funky despite a whole new audience online. Mondlin, who is estate buyer for the Strand, and Meador, a collector, have produced a sprawling and remarkably engaging omnium gatherum of names, personalities, and store lore. Some of the people they profile loved books; some of them loved the hunt; some of them mostly loved the mise-en-scene. Each chapter begins with an apt quote, and there are lists, acknowledgments, reminiscences, and photographs (the last not available in galleys). For anyone interested in the antiquarian book world, this will be a very special volume. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf; First Edition edition (November 24, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786713054
• ISBN-13: 978-0786713059
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,504,939 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #16 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Books & Reading > History of Books

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A loving chronicle of a more literate era, February 29, 2004

By 

Sebastian Thaler (West Haven, CT USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Book Row: An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade (Hardcover)

Reading Mondlin and Meador's descriptions of the long-gone used-book emporia that once graced Fourth Avenue in New York City both depressed and exhilarated me. Depressed, because I'll never have a chance to browse their musty aisles crowded with books. Exhilarated, because this volume successfully captures the thrill of browsing that I've experienced at the Strand bookstore (the sole Book Row survivor) and a few other stores. It's too bad the mindset of our culture has shifted to one in which an intelligent pleasure like browsing for good, cheap used books--in person, in a physical store--has been marginalized. Yes, Web bookbuying has its advantages, but still...I feel something precious has been lost.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bibliophiles, March 14, 2004

By 

Robert S. Robbins (Williamsport, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Book Row: An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade (Hardcover)

It is refreshing to read books written by bibliophiles who express a true appreciation for fine books. They are true literary aesthetes. I've never known scholars or even poets to express such a love of books. Reading "Book Row" has inspired me to acquire more of the classics in fine editions. I think the authors were a little too dismissive of the Internet which has been a tremendous help to me in finding rare books. I no longer have to settle for what I find on the shelves in bookstores with bad taste in books. I can always find exactly what I want to read. The Internet is the greatest bookman there ever was!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Exhaustive, or Overlong, December 25, 2007

By 

John Proctor (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Book Row: An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade (Hardcover)

I have to admit I'm divided on this book. As a 4-5 block slice of New York City history, it's thoroughly researched and reported and many times engaging, with some real characters from a decidedly off-center cache. And as an insider's look at a burgeoning book trade with more book shelves per square block than we're ever likely to see again (sadly), I found it in turn wistfully nostalgic in both the descriptions of dead booksellers and quotes from the ones still alive, and elegiac in its ruminations on the sad state of our post-Book Row culture.

The problem is, each of the things I liked about it work against it as well. Its narrow scope is problematic, at least within the framework Meador and Mondlin use, with many of the chapters seeming a lot like the ones before them with the names changed and a lot of factual repetition. And the nostalgia can get a little overbearing, with a pretty strong Neo-Luddite bias toward internet book dealers ("Those who had the books and the know-how might buy and sell books on the Net, but we'd like to hear Peter Stammer's, Sam Dauber's, and Jack Biblo's views of them as secondhand book dealers"). You could also say that as estate book buyer for the Strand Meador's neutrality might come into question, and you wouldn't be disproved with chapter titles like "The Strand Lives On" and almost a third of the glossy pictures devoted to the Bass family that runs the Strand.

In sum I'd say this is a book for book-industry specialists (especially the older ones who might recognize more of the names the authors drop without much historical grounding) and book buffs with enough interest to sift through 400 pages that could have easily been 200. I fall more into the latter than the former, but even then would recommend Chapters One, Two, Five, Nine, Eleven, Fourteen, Fifteen, the Appendix (a cool little pre-Book Row history of books in NYC), and the foreword by legendary book collector Madeleine B. Stern.