Molly’s Books & Records: Built In Love

In the late 1880s, Antonio Palumbo opened a boarding house in the heart of Philadelphia for his fellow Italian immigrants to ease their life transition. A hundred and forty years later, this same place is considered the largest continuous outdoor market in the country. 

9th Street’s Italian Market thrives on love; its retailers are beyond passionate, and its beauty comes from the rich individuality of every single place. Businesses operate in an “old-world fashion,” worded as such on the official 9th Street Italian Market website. They feed off of each other and the community, sharing customers, and maintaining long-withstanding relationships and reputations. Generations later, the culinary genius of Italian immigrant families shines as bright as ever. 

The market lies in the neighborhood of Bella Vista, which holds a little less than 40,000 residents. Of the residents, about 32,000 of them live in the same house as they did last year. Generally, the people living in the area are there for the long haul, aging along with the place. The majority of housing was built before 1939, as in the bar graph pictured. Its old-fashioned nature aligns with the lifetime of its structures. Bella Vista is a relatively aged neighborhood, with a median age of 31.1. Residents from ages 25 to 44 earn a median wage of $110,038, while those between 45 and 64 years old have a median wage of $98,139. In comparison, people from ages below 25 and ages above 65 earn considerably less.

Deep in the marketplace, sandwiched between Fante’s Kitchen Shop and Nature’s Market, sits Molly’s Books & Records. 

The co-owners, Molly Russakoff and Joe Ankenbrand, have a tight relationship with the nearby businesses and their customers. They often partner with their neighbors, and recently, they partnered with an artist to work on a dream project—said artist, Ryan Genova, created the map pictured to the left. 

Their store stock reflects the ideals of the place around them. Most obviously, it houses an extensive cookbook section. The culinary atmosphere outside of the store makes it the perfect place to share recipes and talk about the art and literature of food. Its content is varied, having titles from a plethora of ethnic backgrounds. Russakoff manages this stock, as well as the other literature in the store. It’s one of her missions to keep the store’s content diverse and intentional. She’s lived in the marketplace for over forty years and loves it with her whole heart. Her passion for literature, especially of the culinary sort, is apparent to anyone who visits the store. Just like the rest of the Italian Market works to do, she works to preserve history and beautiful things. 

Joe Ankenbrand, Russakoff’s husband and business partner, runs the music section of the place. In an interview from 2015, he speaks about the relationship between himself and the community; “There’s something kind of indescribably about the personal connection that we feel with the other people on the street. We kind of feel like we’re all in it together.” Also in that interview, Ankenbrand says that oftentimes, when he is buying stock for the store, he is shopping with specific customer requests in mind. Both he and Russakoff make a great effort to keep their bookstore accessible to readers of all types. 

In Reluctant Capitalists, a book outlining get contradictory nature and uniqueness of the bookselling business, the author writes, “It is not always the case that independent stores are associated with a bourgeois aesthetic while standardized chains are favored by a working or lower-middle class” (Miller 109). In Ankenbrand and Russakoff’s case, this sentiment is truer than ever. The pair make an incredible effort to make sure everyone has a place in their bookstore. 

The Italian Market is made up of entirely independent businesses. Despite their independence and niche content, the way business works between them is brilliant. Customers come for one store and stop at several. The structure lends itself to discovery. The place’s timelessness makes it a hotspot for tourists, and the residents nearby are often store regulars. As said in an article about the meaning of place, “Places must have some relationship to humans and the human capacity to produce and consume meaning” (Creswell 7). 

The bonds between the people of the 9th Street Italian Market community are what make it so special. Everywhere within it, there is a sense of love and appreciation for the history and grounds on which these businesses were built.