A Bookstore Fit For A King

Exterior of John King Books

It’s hard to miss the four-story high, industrial building as you walk down West Lafayette Boulevard in Detroit, Michigan. Located just off the M-10 Lodge Expressway, the bookstore is nestled between Downtown Detroit, an area with museums, historical sites, and restaurants, and the West Side Industrial, a business district with apartments and condos lining the riverfront. Decorated with an enormous image of a glove, an image reminiscent of the original purpose of the building, both your curiosity and feet pull you through the front door of John K. King Used & Rare Books.

As soon as you walk in, you’ll notice boxes of free books. Continuing up the stairs and into the distinct sections, you’ll notice that books cover every wall, every floor space of the store. The first floor consists mostly of books on Michigan, art, and classics, a selection of genres that will immediately draw in any kind of customer.  John King Books isn’t simply a bookstore.  It’s a destination for both tourists and residents of Michigan with a unique sense of “place” that can be found nowhere else here on the outskirts of Downtown Detroit.

John King creates his bookstore’s “authentic sense of place” through the eclectic mix of books in his store.  Here is where his visitors will find exactly what they didn’t know they needed – there is something for everyone.  When we think “independent bookstore” we think “smallness…, being locally based, and limited in geographic scope,” visualizing a small bookstore with a collection that’s impressive in diversity but not size (Miller 165).

We don’t picture John K. King Used & Rare Books.

With four floors filled to the brim with books and a spare building for its rare books collection, John King Books is anything but small.  A landmark in its own right, the bookstore gets a myriad of visitors.  Both proud residents of Michigan and curious tourists walk in ready to find their next literary treasure.

John K. King Used & Rare Books isn’t located in an area bustling with businesses; it’s fairly isolated on a street corner.  Although the store’s website, and Google Maps, claims it’s in Downtown Detroit, some sources place the store in West Side Industrial, such as real estate websites Zillow and Trulia, as well as this map created by compiling various sources.  Regardless of which neighborhood John King Books officially belongs to, the store acts as a bridge between the two neighborhoods.  The West Side Industrial area immediately surrounding the store appears empty and devoid of culture, but John King Books is within walking distance of the museums, theaters, and art galleries in Downtown Detroit.

You may choose to visit the downtown area to experience some culture, but once you get closer to the border between the two neighborhoods, John King Books is the only culture you’re going to get.

John King Used & Rare Books doesn’t have the best relationship with the neighborhood in which it resides.  King originally chose the location on West Lafayette because the building was large enough to hold his enormous book collection, but he didn’t seem to take the actual neighborhood into account.  The books are what matter to King; the neighborhood is simply an afterthought.  Most bookstores strive to be involved with the neighborhood surrounding their bookstore, but King takes a different approach.  While he places those free books in the store’s lobby for people who can’t afford books, he otherwise doesn’t involve himself with the community surrounding the bookstore (May 3, 2016 interview).

Aside from the specific neighborhood, King doesn’t even have an appreciation for Detroit itself. According to King, the city does not treat small business owners well, and it makes King’s work difficult. He told the Detroit Metro Times, “If I were going to start a bookstore in a major city, Detroit would not be on my list of cities to open—and not because of people, but because of the city.”  Although Detroit may not be the most ideal location for a bookstore, King’s passion for bookselling keeps him at West Lafayette Boulevard.

Despite King’s lack of involvement in the community, John K. King Used & Rare Books has grown into an icon of the West Side Industrial area, with its claims to fame as the second best bookstore in the world in 2014 according to Business Insider, and one of the world’s coolest bookstores in 2014 and 2015 according to CNN.  John King Books isn’t the first bookstore to serve as a staple for the surrounding community, though.

Before West Side Industrial there was Corktown, and before John King there was Ethel Claes.

Ethel Claes (right) and her mother Hilja
Ethel Claes (right) and her mother Hilja

Back in the 1950’s, neighboring residential area Corktown encompassed the present-day West Side Industrial district.  It was during this time period that Detroit city planners decided to convert part of Corktown into a light industrial zone.  A woman named Ethel Claes stepped up to rally the residents of Corktown and fight for their homes.  Claes ran a bookstore called The B.C. Claes Book Shop out of her Victorian home with the help of her mother, Hilja.  While the shop had previously been known as a popular stop for Midwest rare book collectors, it was now known among the Corktown community as a “rallying point” for the fight against city planners.

As can be seen today, the Corktown residents failed to save the 75 acres of residences that were bulldozed and replaced with West Side Industrial.  Claes’s leadership and spirit can still be credited with preventing the loss of even more land and preserving what now makes up Corktown today.  John King Books has replaced The B.C. Claes Book Shop as Corktown/West Side Industrial’s local literary gathering place.  While it may not be the center of a significant fight against the city, the store’s identity as a spiritual descendant of Ethel Claes can be easily seen as it brings people together from both within West Side Industrial and outside the area’s boundaries.

Since it is located in a light industrial zone, there aren’t really any residents for John King Books to fight for, unless you go down to the Riverfront apartments.  West Side Industrial today is vastly different from Claes’s Corktown of fifty years ago.  It can then be assumed that a vast majority of visitors to the store come from outside to West Side Industrial, and they’re coming to the area with John King Books as their destination, not the neighborhood.  “Space” is acknowledged as being innately present in all areas of reality, but it is up to us as humans to assign significance and establish “place” (Cresswell 11).  John King Books has carved out its own little “place” in the insignificant “space” of West Side Industrial thanks to the patrons it draws to its doors.

The buildings that would become home to John King Books as they were in 1966
The buildings that would become home to John King Books as they were in 1966

Now let’s take a look at the history of the store itself.  King’s business hasn’t always operated out of the dilapidated factory it’s known for today, and his bookstore actually led a pretty mobile life in the beginning.  Initially established in Dearborn, Michigan (1971), John K. King Used & Rare Books only operated for a few years before packing up and shipping out to the Michigan Theatre Building (1977) in Downtown Detroit.  Unfortunately, this new location didn’t last long, either, as the store’s growing book collection demanded more room.  When the Advance Glove factory building at 901 West Lafayette came up for sale in 1983, King didn’t hesitate to purchase the four-story complex for his expanding bookstore venture.  Now in 2016, John K. King Used & Rare Books is still conducting business from the same glove factory, and King himself now has various awards in honor of his bookstore.

John K. King SignKnowing the history of John King Books is insightful into King’s business, but that sense of “place” is what truly helps you understand its impact on the bookstore.  “Place, in whatever guise, is like space and time, a social construct” (Cresswell 57).  When you take the opportunity to look at John King Books’s place within the industrial district of Detroit as a social construct, you begin to see the outside influences that define it.  While the physical location of the building certainly makes a difference, the social workings of the surrounding area largely affect how we perceive John King’s bookstore.  When you juxtapose what is essentially the only major independent bookstore in the area outside Downtown Detroit, you get an idea of how vital this store is to the distribution of literature in the area.  This outlet of books is really the only resource available to local residents looking to satiate their literary curiosities.

The ownership of John King Used & Rare Books has been consistent over the many years it has been in business.  Today, John King represents the store behind him.  He is passionate about the collection of books in his store.  “Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories” (Benjamin 60). King’s store certainly appears chaotic, and this chaos can also be seen in King’s personality.  In interviews, King isn’t forthcoming about specific dates in the store’s history; he doesn’t seem to keep track of when the store started and when it moved.

So what does King remember?

John K. King
John K. King

King recalls his childhood, which he spent exploring used bookstores in Detroit. He was attracted to the stuff inside the bookstores: both the books and the “various characters” he met (Detroit Metro Times).  From a young age, King had a passion for used bookstores, so it seems only natural that he decided to open his own store as an adult.

King also recalls the estates where he acquired the stock for his store.  When he gets a call from a lawyer or an heir offering up an estate to be sold, he buys what he thinks he can sell, transferring ownership of the specific collection.  “Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects” and the collector lives in those objects (Benjamin 67).  When King acquires books for his store, he establishes this intimate relationship.  The store’s shelves hold King’s personal collection, the books he deems worthy of stocking, and his presence is alive in the store.

John K. King Used & Rare Books is a reflection of King’s tastes and tendencies. It’s a little disorganized and scattered, but full of valuable books.  And, with the store named after him, it’s no surprise to discover that King is an active member of the store’s own little community.  He works in the store consistently, spending his days buying books, arguing with people, and discussing literature (May 3, 2016 interview).  He is a recognizable figure in the store as the owner of the large collection that fill the store’s four floors.

This independent bookstore boasts an incredible amount of variety within that ever expansive stock.  While you won’t have any difficulties finding your classics or historical accounts, you would also be hard-pressed to find a subject not covered somewhere within this plethora of books.  All of these different genres coming together to compose an overall organized layout is the pure epitome of order and disorder.  The nature of the collector forms a “dialectical tension between the poles of disorder and order” (Benjamin 60).  To an outside spectator, the arrangement of books in John King Books may seem like nothing more than chaos, but in the right eyes, his bookstore maintains perfect order.

As you observe the contents contained on each floor of John K. King Used & Rare Books, you’ll notice a trend as you ascend the building.  Though the material covered in the books of the ground floor is conventional, an obscurity of genre is gradually explored as you go up each level.  By the time you actually reach the top floor of King’s bookstore, you’re confronted with literature pertaining to odd topics, like alternative medicine and the Kennedy family.  It’s hard to see the logic and reasoning behind this array of literature, but John King does have a method to the madness.  Even if you are unable to understand the order in the store’s disorder, the bookstore is still fulfilling its greater purpose.  By hosting this wide selection of literary genres, King is not only providing his customers with variety, but connecting them to worlds they would have never imagined.

While some people think “literature” is only restricted to the classics like Charles Dickens or Walt Whitman, John King and his bookstore suggest that the term “literature” can be applied to all writing.  The store’s layout only places emphasis on certain genres from a business point of view by placing the more popular genres like Michigan history and juvenile literature on the first floor.  The rare book room housed in the second building also places more monetary value on the physical books but not necessarily on the words they contain.  Fiction and non-fiction are mixed together on each one of the store’s four floors, and the store shows no shame in selling everything from True Crime to Civil War to Classics to Self Help books.

The website for the store’s rare book catalog claims: We are particularly interested in books concerning Military History, Michigan and Detroit, the Auto Industry, Signed books, First Editions, Stationary[,] Steam Engineering, Bible Reference, Chess and Checkers, Slight-of-Hand Magic, Incunabula and Early Printings, etc.”  The store seeks to offer customers a myriad of genres, while still helping them find something they can’t find anywhere else.  There are little to no restrictions on genre or form of writing for the literature sold at John K. King Rare & Used Books.

John King Books presents itself as a place where people can get lost in literature.  Customers are encouraged to lose themselves in the stacks, browsing every shadowy corner with minimal employee interference.  The top three floors each have a telephone that customers can use to call an employee for assistance, a necessary fixture since the store doesn’t have any employees wandering among the stacks hoping to help.  John King Used & Rare Books is a store where you can stay for an extended period of time; it’s not a store where you can easily just pop in and out with your book.  The store is an inviting oasis, a safe haven for those who love books.

Since John King Books doesn’t use computers to inventory the stock, customers can’t request for a bookseller to simply look up a title or author digitally.  Without this digital crutch that so many bookstores have become accustomed to, customers and booksellers alike have no choice but to wander through the stacks and search for their request themselves.  The store’s large and diverse collection offers you the chance to find not just the perfect book for your needs, but also yourself.

john king books exteriorYou might fear that the changing techniques used by booksellers to rack up profits will drive John King Used & Rare Books out of business, but the owner isn’t worried. “We were here before Borders, we were here during Borders, and we’re here after Borders,” King told the Detroit Metro Times.  The store has proven itself capable of surviving the shifting technology of bookstores, and it if can outlast a successful chain store and the shifting political climate of Detroit, then the store doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

One strength the bookstore has that allows it to survive is its international presence.  King is proud of the fact that he ships books all over the world, which illustrates the store’s desire to be more than a community bookstore.  John K. King Used & Rare Books doesn’t strive to provide literature to locals; it strives to provide literature to readers, wherever they may be located.

As King says, “we’re not a community bookstore, we’re a destination bookstore” (May 3, 2016 interview).

 

Sources

Text

Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. Print.

Cresswell, Tim. Place: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2004.

Miller, Laura J. Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

 

Websites
John K. King’s Used & Rare Books Website. Rarebooklink.com.

http://www.rarebooklink.com/cgi-bin/kingbooks/index.html

DeVito, Lee. “John K. King Used & Rare Books.” Metrotimes.com. 2014.

http://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/john-king-of-john-k-king-used-and-rare-books/Content?oid=2143899

John K. King Used & Rare Books Official Website. Kingbooksdetroit.com.

http://www.kingbooksdetroit.com/

Szewczyk, Paul. “Corktown History.” Corktownhistory.blogspot.com. 2014.

http://corktownhistory.blogspot.com/2014/08/john-k-king-books.html

 

Media
“John K. King Used & Rare Books.” GoogleMaps. 2016.

<https://www.google.com/maps/place/John+K.+King+Used+%26+Rare+Books/@42.3276753,-83.0571661,3a,75y,148.83h,92.46t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s4sPzMkqbArS7Novd013pSA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D4sPzMkqbArS7Novd013pSA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D204.04396%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656!4m2!3m1!1s0x883b2d3898055011:0x9cb2ad271d9156f2!6m1!1e1?hl=en>

“John K. King Used & Rare Books History.” TimeToast. 2016.

<http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/john-k-king-used-and-rare-books>

“John K. King Used & Rare Books.” ThingLink. 2016.

<http://www.thinglink.com>

“Literary Tourist: John K. King Used and Rare Books, Detroit.” YouTube.com. 2012.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS0oUuFHuMY>

“W Lafayette Blvd” GoogleMaps. 2016.

<https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3276798,-83.0571556,0a,75y,140.27h,88.67t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1s4sPzMkqbArS7Novd013pSA!2e0?source=apiv3>

Images
John K. King’s bookstore

http://media.afar.com/uploads/images/post_images/images/jGDWnvivwE/post_display_cropped_open-uri20130626-24184-6imw1o?1383817134

Ethel and Hilja Claes

http://corktownhistory.blogspot.com/2013/02/ethel-claes-and-west-side-industrial.html

Exterior of old glove factory

http://dlxs.lib.wayne.edu/cgi/i/image/image-idx?id=S-VMC-X-47335%5D47335

Michigan’s largest bookstore sign

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/88/f8/dd/88f8dde5807b60276fccacc156447d25.jpg

John K. King

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5287/5222959902_8577a97c51_b.jpg

King’s bookstore skyward view

http://s3-media4.fl.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/QAGkOgfboYcoClGWggSW4g/o.jpg

Time Line: Advance Glove Manufacturing

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-h_X5liWHMKM/U5tVDCfJevI/AAAAAAAAIHE/zp7maCsL_us/s512/2014-05-24%252016.41.17.jpg

Time Line: Old Advance Glove Factory

https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3918/14593048290_31ee12809f_o.jpg

Time Line: Dearborn, Michigan Sign

http://dcxposed.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/dearborn-arab-fest.jpg

Time Line: John K. King Used & Rare Bookstore

http://motorcitymuckraker.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/John-King-books_2489.jpg

 

Organized Chaos in John K. King Used and Rare Books

Imagine walking down West Lafayette Boulevard and stepping inside John K. King Used and Rare Books. When you cross the threshold, you’ll immediately see shelves of books stretching far back into the store. Remember, this store used to be a factory, so the building is more massive than your typical bookstore. On the first floor you’ll see popular books, titles that will likely sell quickly: Bibles, juvenile nonfiction, classics, and cookbooks. Whether you are 20160314_173533000_iOSan avid reader or not, these books will seem fairly accessible, and you may choose to just stick to this floor. If you’re feeling curious, though, you’ll wander up the stairs to check out what else the store has to offer. You’ll visit the second floor, which holds mostly reference books and educational texts, a significant difference from the accessible titles on the first floor. Then you’ll find your way to the third floor, which holds books you might choose for entertainment: mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, and picture books. These books mark a transition back to accessible, popular titles.

By the time you reach the fourth floor, you may feel a little tired from climbing so many sets of stairs, but the sight of seemingly endless shelves of books will surely cure you of your weariness. This floor holds the most obscure collection: books about pets, fitness, religion, agriculture, philosophy, and a number of other random categories. Most of these titles probably won’t interest you, but perhaps one small section will catch your eye, and you’ll scour the selection for the perfect book about law enforcement or anthropology or fashion.

As I virtually browsed the store, using pictures and videos to piece together the fullest picture of John K. King Used and Rare Books possible, the term that came to mind over and over again is “organized chaos.” As you can see on the floor map, the store has designated sections for every category of books, and handwritten signs clearly label the individual shelves. But the store also features crates and boxes scattered on the floor, presumably crammed with books that can’t fit on the shelves, as well as stacks of books on tables. Even with four stories, the store simply doesn’t have the shelf space for all of its books, so the booksellers leave them lying around wherever they will fit.

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Through social media accounts (Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram), the store promotes its aesthetic: dark, dusty, overflowing shelves.

[wooslider slideshow_speed=”5.0″ slider_type=”attachments” limit=”8″]

Unlike so many bookstores with bright and open spaces, John K. King Used and Rare Books has a labyrinth of shelves with plenty of dark corners to hide away in as you browse for hours. The fact that the building is an old factory is quirky and artistic, especially since there is evidence of the store’s history in the design, such as the image of the glove on the outside of the building. Rather than conforming to the standard image of a bookstore, John K. King Used and Rare Books lets itself stand out as unique. It also encourages customers to get lost in the shelves. It’s not the store you go to when you want to quickly find a specific book; it’s the store you go to when you want to get lost in literature. By promoting the value of spending time in a bookstore for personal enjoyment rather than for the purpose of purchasing a specific product, John K. King signals to visitors that it isn’t a place that’s only concerned with making a profit. John K. King seems to treat the people who come into the store as book lovers rather than consumers.

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The booksellers of John K. King Used and Rare Books mostly buy books that are rare or obscure, books that can’t easily be found online (Detroit Gems). I think the fourth floor is an excellent example of how beneficial it can be to stock such obscure books. The store doesn’t have to compete with online retailers who stock the same titles, and customers are lured in by the promise of old, unusual books. Take a closer look at the map I’ve drawn below, which shows the different categories of books on the fourth floor.

The organized chaos of the store and the randomness of the fourth floor selection remind me of Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on collecting. In Illuminations, he writes, “there is in the life of a collector a dialectical tension between the poles of disorder and order” (60). If we assume that all of the books in John K. King form a collection, then we must acknowledge that the booksellers are collectors who experience this tension. While the sections of the store are neatly labeled, the organization seems random upon closer inspection. Books about geography are placed next to books about the Kennedy family, and books about law share a shelf with books about interior decoration. These categories don’t clearly connect to each other, so in this sense, the collection is disorganized, a sign that the employees of the store simply shelve books wherever there is room for them. Yet the collection swings back toward the pole of order when you consider the booksellers’ criteria for buying any book for the store. Since they only buy books that are old or unusual, every book in the store fits into this particular category, so there is some amount of order to the collection. John K. King balances the disorder with the order, using labels and maps to create organization in a large space filled with approximately one million books of different categories.

The care with which the booksellers at John K. King Used and Rare Books organize their store demonstrates that they treat their books as valuable things. Bruno Latour has examined the distinctions between objects and things, claiming that objects are “abandoned to the empty mastery of science and technology” while things are “cradled in the respectful idiom of art, craftsmanship, and poetry” (2288). In his eyes, things have “rich and complicated qualities” that should be celebrated as being different from mere objects (2289). Based on Latour’s definitions, I think the booksellers at John K. King would consider books as celebrated things as opposed to objects. In an interview, one of the booksellers told a Detroit news program that “the books are very much something special” and that “reading is an emotional experience” (Detroit Gems). It’s clear that the booksellers at John K. King don’t think of their books as regular products; they value books and literature for the ideas and emotions they provide customers.

Of course, since John K. King holds so many books, it’s possible that the booksellers don’t think of every single book as a valuable, celebrated thing. Would the books about engineering on the second floor be considered things as valuable as the books of poetry on the first floor? If we use Latour’s distinction between objects and things, wouldn’t the books about math on the second floor fall into the category of “empty mastery of science and technology”? Or are they special because they provide educational insights into this empty mastery? In John K. King Used and Rare Books, we see how the collection of so many different types of books in one space can complicate Latour’s ideas of objects and things.

 

Images

“More Books” staircase: https://www.instagram.com/p/0VP4Fxu0_P/?taken-by=johnkingbooksdetroit

Map of store: https://www.facebook.com/officialjohnkingbooks/photos/pb.214267872096283.-2207520000.1458531161./430465310476537/?type=3&theater

Phone: http://johnkingbooks.tumblr.com/post/95824314853/the-store-is-so-big-that-we-have-phones-on-the

Environment shelf: http://www.kingbooksdetroit.com/preview-of-our-store/6gedta0hllbpmxlq1g1iuzj71ap5q3

Books on table (juvenile nonfiction section): http://www.kingbooksdetroit.com/preview-of-our-store/a8rh7va0d2yhazolyztbl32qdz00bo

Front counter: http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/john-k-king-books-detroit-2?select=BZkn2MiOZSx6McsrIJ4FLg

Stairway painting: http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/john-k-king-books-detroit-2?select=fjr-mldxIJRCRfpuf58RjA

Entrance: http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/john-k-king-books-detroit-2?select=T3iqN4gAnXMqiojktCDkng

Stairway (art): http://www.kingbooksdetroit.com/preview-of-our-store/j35cr0dufaezqjunzmjdek5tuzbtce

Shelves (nook): http://johnkingbooks.tumblr.com/post/96085002133/lovely-friday-morning-at-the-bookstore-finally

Stairway (3rd floor): http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/john-k-king-books-detroit-2?select=crqvS9Plq3yB8keCg8a4xw

Shelves (3rd floor): http://johnkingbooks.tumblr.com/post/92921062583/sorted-more-books-for-scifi-roleplaying-and-i

Books on floor: http://www.kingbooksdetroit.com/preview-of-our-store/5lnrxoemm0309kqgl2pbc6k3t09pv5

Books on table: http://www.kingbooksdetroit.com/preview-of-our-store/l88lz1r1d9duu4xbq1t54p0ndk9fvl

Slideshow images:

  1. http://johnkingbooks.tumblr.com/post/97965352423/opening-up-for-this-saturday-weather-is-good
  2. http://johnkingbooks.tumblr.com/post/97731818698/the-books-are-going-up-by-the-hundreds-on-the-4th
  3. http://johnkingbooks.tumblr.com/post/101871900093/we-have-got-some-heat-going-on-in-the-bookstore
  4. http://johnkingbooks.tumblr.com/post/98825232023/it-is-cozy-in-here-folks-fine-book-shopping
  5. http://johnkingbooks.tumblr.com/post/98470952678/moved-the-advertising-books-to-be-be-with-the
  6. http://johnkingbooks.tumblr.com/post/98892601893/sorting-books-this-is-axtuallt-the-best-part-of
  7. http://johnkingbooks.tumblr.com/post/104438849723/moving-it-was-no-fun-but-maybe-you-will-enjoy-some
  8. http://johnkingbooks.tumblr.com/post/104766260853/we-have-aisles-of-gardening-books-maybe-you-could

Exterior of building: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/600×315/4e/15/e8/4e15e8fe487b11df0bbdfd5e5831808d.jpg

“I’d rather get lost” note: https://www.instagram.com/p/zSwcEWu0xH/?taken-by=johnkingbooksdetroit

4th floor: https://www.instagram.com/p/_47Vi0u01D/?taken-by=johnkingbooksdetroit

Books on table: http://www.kingbooksdetroit.com/preview-of-our-store/dimeodichik00zwywcjhmy9lwawno5

 

Maps

https://www.thinglink.com

 

Videos

Detroit Gems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euJpR4pINEg

Literary Tourist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS0oUuFHuMY

50 Year Staple of Detroit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEALEiSiSCc

 

Websites

John K. King Used and Rare Books: http://www.kingbooksdetroit.com/

John K. King Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnkingbooks

John K. King Tumblr: http://johnkingbooks.tumblr.com/

John K. King Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnkingbooksdetroit/

John K. King Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/officialjohnkingbooks/

 

Texts

Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. Print.

Latour, Bruno. Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? Print.

 

John K. King Used & Rare Books: Preserving History & Place

When John King was a child, he enjoyed visiting used bookstores in Detroit and meeting the eclectic mix of people you’re guaranteed to find in a bookstore. In Sunwise Turn, Madge Jenison discusses this diversity of customers in bookstores, writing that “in a bookshop you drink democracy” (113). She writes with apparent fascination about the different types of people you can encounter in a bookstore—“all sorts, the great, and cold, young ex-convicts, shoplifters” (113) and it seems that John King shared this fascination. He was always intrigued by the bookstores he visited, and these stores seemed to become a part of his blood. In a way, it seemed inevitable that he would one day open his own used bookstore in Detroit.

In 1965, when King was a teenager, he found his way into the book business when he started trading books, and he opened a small shop downtown and briefly moved into a store in Dearborn, Michigan. In 1971, he opened a store in the Michigan Theatre Building in Detroit. Eventually, his collection of books outgrew the Theatre Building, so in 1983 he purchased the old Advance Glove Factory in Detroit where the store continues to thrive today.

This timeline shows the major events in the history of John K. King Used and Rare Books and the building in which it currently resides.

When King made the decision to move his store, he wasn’t concerned with the neighborhood. All he was looking for was a space big enough to fit his massive collection of books, which he found simply by searching in the classified ads. King didn’t seem to consider whether or not the residents of the area would be good customers, or whether his business would be able to thrive in a location somewhat isolated from the commercial area of downtown Detroit. He didn’t even bother to change the exterior of the building from an old factory to an inviting bookstore.

This all seems like a bad business decision to me, but clearly King did something right, because the store still stands. It seems like King had the attitude that his store would survive regardless of location or appearance because it sold old books, which he thought of as special products that would always be in demand. I think he would agree that he stumbled upon something special when he found this particular building.

A newspaper article featuring the caption “John King couldn’t picture how anyone could move his building”

Perhaps the most interesting bit of information about this building at the corner of Lafayette and Fifth is that it wasn’t always located there. When customers would tell King that his store had been moved from the corner of Lafayette and Fourth over to the corner of Fifth when it was still a factory, he had trouble believing them. He wasn’t from the area, so it probably would have seemed like the residents were just messing with the new kid on the block. I had troubling believing these customers too, when I first saw articles and stories about this so-called moving factory. Why would someone move a building? How would someone move a building?

The answer to my first question is the John C. Lodge Freeway. One of the first freeways to be built in Detroit, it encountered some obstacles, one of them being the large Advance Glove Factory that stood in its path. Construction began in 1947, and it destroyed thousands of homes and buildings throughout the city. But for some reason, the Advance Glove Factory wasn’t destroyed; instead, it was moved.

The answer to my second question leaves me skeptical, but according to the bookstore’s website, customers have provided photographic proof: the building was moved onto “log-like rollers made of Alabama gum wood” and rolled to the west (corktownhistory). Apparently the work in the factory didn’t even stop during the moving process; employees continued to go about their business as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

During the mid-1940s, Detroit dominated a number of industrial fields in the United States, including electric refrigeration, adding machines, stove manufacturing, and the most obvious one: automobiles. To transport all the products, Detroit began to construct the aforementioned freeway system, which not only destroyed public housing units, but also failed to offer residents relocation options. Though this was against the law, the city effectively created 17,000 refugees and a wide distrust for the government. As a result, many middle-class residents began to move to the suburbs, leaving those with lower incomes to remain in the distressed city (city-data).

However, Detroit began to recover during the 1960s, making efforts to improve education, housing, employment, and economic development. It was during this time that King entered the book business, his arrival coinciding with the city’s moves toward social progress. Detroit’s revival continued into the 1980s (city-data), when King finally found a long-term home at 901 West Lafayette Boulevard. King started his business at a time when Detroit was beginning to value culture and social progress again, driving people into bookstores at a higher rate than would have occurred in the previous few decades.

When King was a child, he says there were probably about 20 used bookstores in Detroit, all around the downtown area. Most of these stores have since disappeared, likely at the same time that the city was experiencing so much economic distress. It’s no secret that bookstores are becoming less popular now that ebooks and online shopping are all the rage, but King doesn’t seem worried about his store, for good reason. If the store can outlast Borders, why wouldn’t it be able to hold its own against Amazon?

To this day, King refuses to computerize his store. If a customer wants to find a particular book, a computer search cannot determine whether the book is in stock; the customer must wander the aisles. With four stories of books arranged on shelves with hand-written signs, it’s easy to get lost in the stacks, but the store undeniably seems alive and unique in comparison to the Barnes and Noble a few miles away.

Unlike your typical chain bookstore, John K. King Used and Rare Books hasn’t rushed to keep up with new trends in bookselling over the years. While the chains have added clean, organized, and familiar layouts, John K. King has remained a labyrinth where books fill every available nook and cranny. When I look at pictures of the store’s interior, it seems old-fashioned, and I can practically smell that distinct old-book scent through my computer screen. To me, John K. King Used and Rare Books looks like a time capsule that captures what bookstores used to be before the chains dominated the industry.

Of course, King’s refusal to turn to computerization in this modern age of bookselling seemed strange to me at first. After all, I’ve grown up with computers as the solution for practically everything. But the more I think about King’s store, the more I find his methods to be admirable. In the same way that the owners of the Advance Glove Factory didn’t want to see the building destroyed in favor of a new highway, King doesn’t want to see his old-fashioned bookstore change in favor of computerization.

To the owners of the bookstore and the factory, the building is not just a location for a business, it is a place that they have created in the neighborhood. As Time Cresswell writes, “To think of an area of the world as a rich and complicated interplay of people and the environment—as a place—is to free us from thinking of it as facts and figures” (11). If the factory owners thought about the building as “facts and figures,” the factory would have been torn down to make way for the highway and moved to a new building. If John King thought about his business as “facts and figures,” he’d have computerized his store and imitated the layout of successful chain stores in order to maximize his profits. Instead of focusing on logical business decisions, these owners have embraced not only their locations in the neighborhood but the physical building itself. Cresswell writes about the concept of a sense of place, meaning “the subjective and emotional attachment people have to place” (7), and it’s obvious that the people behind this building are emotionally attached to their place. If the former and current owners of the building didn’t think their place was special or meaningful, they’d never go to all the trouble to preserve its history in the face of technological changes.

 

Photos

bookstore exterior: www.pinterest.com/pin/446278644297053705/

newspaper article: www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC55J62_mh-detroit-on-the-move

bookstore interiors: www.kingbooksdetroit.com/preview-of-our-store/

Websites

City Data: www.city-data.com/world-cities/Detroit-History.html

Corktown History: corktownhistory.blogspot.com/2014/08/john-k-king-books.html

Deadline Detroit: deadlinedetroit.com/articles/11434/video_a_3-minute_chat_with_the_owner_of_john_k_king_s_books#.Vsz-xfkrLIV

John K. King Used and Rare Books website: www.kingbooksdetroit.com/

Metro Times: www.metrotimes.com/detroit/john-king-of-john-k-king-used-and-rare-books/Content?oid=2143899

OU News Bureau: www.ounewsbureau.com/?p=2251

Texts

Cresswell, Tim. Place: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. Print.

Jenison, Madge. Sunwise Turn: A Human Comedy of Bookselling. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1923. Print.

Sambrano, Marilynn. “Plot Seldom Quickens in Used-Book Biz.” Crain’s Detroit Business 11.15 (1995): 12. ProQuest. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.

Timeline

www.timetoast.com/timelines/1224228

 

John K. King Used & Rare Books: Isolated in the Big City

john k king exterior sketch

I’ve never thought of Detroit as an environment for trendy hipsters to browse quirky bookstores, so I was surprised to discover that Detroit is actually home to what Business Insider calls the “#2 bookstore in the world.” John K. King Used and Rare Books is huge; it holds over a million books in its four stories. The store resides in an old glove factory at 901 West Lafayette Boulevard at the edge of downtown Detroit.

What I find particularly striking about the store is that the image of a glove is still visible on the building’s exterior, and it looks more like an old factory than a trendy bookstore. On the inside, however, the image of an old factory goes right out the window when you take a look at the stacks of books crammed in every corner.

john k king exterior

The store stands isolated and imposing on a street corner, beckoning only the most hardcore readers to enter. The chipped paint and dark windows don’t exactly seem welcoming, but if downtown Detroit residents or visitors to the area are anything like me, the promise of books is enough to lure them into the store.

There’s also the fact that the store’s uniqueness is intriguing. Tim Cresswell writes about the search for “an authentic sense of place” in neighborhoods, houses, and stores because people want to “live differently from the mass of people” (61). If people are tired of seeing the same design and layout in every chain bookstore they visit, they can’t deny that John K. King appears authentic and different.

Downtown Detroit is primarily a business district, though approximately 4,284 people call it home. The majority of the residents are African American, and most of the rest are Caucasian. This makes the downtown area a bit more diverse than Detroit itself, which is 82.16 percent African American.

meta-chart

The area is most popular with young people in their 20s and 30s, single (as in not married), with incomes on the lower end of the scale.

age breakdown

marital status breakdownhousehold income breakdown

 

 

 

 

 

While the bookstore itself may not be bordered by many shops and restaurants, there are plenty of attractions within walking distance. Closest to the store are office and apartment buildings, but downtown Detroit has much more to offer visitors, like museums, historical sites, parks, and restaurants. Much of the area seems to be geared more toward tourists and visitors than residents, although the businesses would certainly appeal to the young people living there.

On the map below, the orange diamonds denote restaurants, the blue pins are historical buildings, the green pins are parks, the pink pins are museums, and the yellow circles are houses of worship.

As you can see, the red star representing John K. King Used and Rare Books looks a little lonely there on the map, but I would imagine that having the bookstore a bit removed from the regular hustle and bustle of the city creates a quieter, more relaxing book browsing experience.

While the bookstore is obviously located in a city, perhaps one of the reasons for separating it from most of the other businesses in the area comes from the success of suburban bookstores that began after World War II. As Laura Miller explains in Reluctant Capitalists, suburban stores may not have the same foot traffic as major city stores, but customers are often willing to drive to larger bookstores in less busy areas (91). John K. King offers free parking outside the store for just this purpose. You may not accidentally stumble upon John K. King while shopping in the city, but perhaps you’ll be willing to make a trip specifically to check it out.

Aside from the location, the transformation from glove factory to bookstore is unique; it reminds me of Tim Cresswell’s ideas about space and place. John K. King, the owner and founder of the store, transformed 901 West Lafayette Boulevard from an ordinary “space” where a factory once stood to a personal “place” with all the elements of culture we tend to attach to bookstores, seeming to give the building more value and a better sense of place. I can’t help but think that John K. King must have found something symbolic in this transformation process, that he enjoyed taking this unassuming building on the outskirts of downtown Detroit and adding his own style to create a successful bookstore, as if to prove that the culture of information and intellect surrounding bookstores can make even the most basic location or building interesting.

On the other hand, maybe John K. King simply thought it would be cool to establish a bookstore in an old factory. If that’s the case, can you blame him? I certainly can’t.

 

 

Texts:

Cresswell, Tim. Place: A Short Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. Print.

Miller, Laura J. Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

Websites:

http://www.areavibes.com/

http://www.businessinsider.com/

http://www.kingbooksdetroit.com/

http://visitdetroit.com/

Images/Graphs:

http://www.kingbooksdetroit.com/

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/446278644297053705/

http://www.areavibes.com/detroit-mi/downtown/demographics/

Maps:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zJYQNuqjUYu4.k9bQA5qK_6EI&usp=sharing

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3276879,-83.0571367,3a,82.2y,139h,90t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1stBTsZOvFTedFwucUZyejAQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656