Thirteen-by-Fifteen: A Look At GBM’s First Location

In 1920, Frances Steloff paid the first month’s rent for a basement apartment that she turned into a bookstore, she called Gotham Books and Art. Her first payment of $75 covered a twelve-by-fifteen feet sales floor, a three-by-three feet window display, and a ten-by-fifteen feet kitchen that she could gain access to if need be. Six months after her first payment, her stock of 175 books increased and began to overflow the sale floor. Steloff’s reaction was to get access to the kitchen area and use it as a secondary sales floor for her rare and out-of-print books.

Feel free to run your cursor over the floor plan above. The black circles indicated stories and information about the rooms and furniture. In contrast, the green circles describe my own narrative and thoughts on the place and it’s decor.

The main sale floor was divided into sides by an eight-by-three table directly in the middle. At the center of this table was Steloff’s working desk. Additionally, the two sides acted as bookshelves. On this table, books were organized with the title and front cover facing upward, not with the spine facing the ceiling. Once this table became full, Steloff piled additional books on top of each other. Having two separate sides to the bookstore outlined two major goals of GBM, to allow customers a place to look at and purchase books, as well as provide customers a space to read, discuss, and enjoy those books. Lastly, this separation acted as the only control Steloff had over the traffic flow. Therefore, customers had the freedom to treat GBM as a place to quickly buy a book and leave, as well as a place to linger.

The side that exhibited the goal of finding and purchasing books had five five-by-five feet wooden bookshelves lining the wall.  Originally, books on these shelves had the front cover facing toward the center of the sales floor, not spine-outward. Customers would comment that although it made the small collection take up more space, it put a large focus on the furniture itself: “To be sure, the store didn’t look empty. You might have wondered whether the furniture was there to aid in selling books, or the books were in the background for selling the furniture. She could fill up about five five-foot shelves provided many books were displayed the wide-way—front out instead of spine out” (Rogers 64). catsArranging books in this manner changed as she added more books to her collection. Not only did the books line shelves standing vertically with their spines outward, they also layered horizontally on top of one another, piling on the top of the shelves until they touched the ceiling.  Although it was reported that as the store gathered more inventory, it appeared messy, Steloff had a distinct order in which she would categorize the books into sections based on topic or cost.

In regards to stock at this location, Steloff attended to a specific clientele interested in theater, art, and design: “Thus not preference but haphazard pressures turned her into a specialist in two profitable fields: art and theater. As Mischke had foretold, her customers educated her” (Rogers 74). While she focused her stock around her customer base, Steloff had a direct relationship with each book that became part of her original collection: “Once upon a time she had read every book she owned: the James, the Browning, and all those included in the original stock. But such a detailed familiarity couldn’t be kept up. It was impossible in spite of the fact that all the books were the kind she loved” (Rodgers 77). Keeping a relationship with her collection speaks the idea that things, like books, create identity: “…identity, whether cultural or personal, presupposes acts of collection, gathering up possessions in arbitrary systems of value and meaning” (Clifford 217). Before Steloff would allow these books to represent her and her business, she needed to familiarize herself with the collection.

The second half of the store provided more of a homey feeling, that that invited customers to linger, shop, and chat during their time at GBM. Although this side also had a five-by-five feet bookshelf, it hosted to other furniture commonly found in homes. One of these was a furnace. Although this furnace was not added by Steloff, it served multiple purposes in the shop. For example, while providing heat to the small sales floor, the furnace added to the homey environment. Another furniture item in the shop that added to the ambiance was straight-chairs. GBM started with only three chairs for customers, and during the late night hours they became an essential place for academic and leisurely conversation among actors and artists. Eventually, one straight-chair had to be used as an extension of the long middle table and began to hold stacks of books. While the chair gained a new use, Steloff realized the importance of having somewhere for customers to sit, and added a rocking chair to the space.

gotham front

Steloff effectively utilized the front of her store as well. The three steps leading customers from the street toward the front door was surrounded by two bookshelves. These bookshelves held book jackets, pamphlets, fliers, photographs, etc: “The entrance is booby-trapped. On one side of book jackets in the show window distracts the eye…They can draw the incautious browser’s attention hazardously away from the couple of steps down, the ninety degree left turn and the half step up that guide him into the Gotham Book Mart” (Rodgers 5). This outdoor collection served many purposes for the bookstore. One of these purposes was to attract customers inward via colorful paper flaps blowing from the wind. In addition to the odd movements and colors attracting customers, many people walking by would ask about or comment on what happened to the outdoor collection when it started to rain or snow. Due to the frequency of these questions and comments, Steloff was able to give her storefront and herself voice before meeting the customer through a meaningful pun that followed the store through its advancement: “We take them in.” A second purpose was to have the storefront define the shop as a bookstore. This was especially important since this storefront was owned by a tailor before Gotham’s arrival.

 

Beside the bookshelves sat a three-by-three foot window display that jetted outward toward the street. Steloff put a small curtain in the window display to demonstrate the established homey atmosphere. In addition, she themed the window display around popular or expensive books. Her emphasis on these books exhibited a hierarchy in her collection: “All such collections embody hierarchies of value, exclusions, rule-governed territories of the self” (Clifford 219). By keeping books that she defined as higher in the hierarchy in the front on display (in contrast to having low-value collections kept on outdoor bookshelves), Steloff identified herself and her store as a place where customers can find top value books. Her customers desire to purchase these books, in addition to her own drive to keep them in stock, reflected the idea that collecting displays a type of class and wealth: “But the notion that this gathering involves the accumulation of possessions, the idea that identity is a kind of wealth (of objects, knowledge, memories, experience)” (Clifford 218).  This projected wealth was used to determine the value of books, in addition to the value of the reader.

In this way, GBM’s original location was successful due to Steloff’s customers desire to own a book that represented their identity. The value of the book doing so, although  imposed on by Steloff, was created by customers based on rarity, topic, and price. Therefore, these books became projections of the customer: “Though art may seem to be, most fundamentally, “a projection of our mental images upon the world of things,” this is art that instead shows how weary that world has become of all our projections” (Brown 15). Furthermore, the open floor plan created by Steloff allowed customers the freedom to spend time in the area of the store that they associate their identity with, the bookshelves or the furnace.

 

Sources:

Text:

Brown, Bill. “Thing Theory.” Critical Inquiry Vol. 28, No. 1. p 1-22.

Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1988.

Rogers, W. G. Wise Men Fish Here: The Story of Frances Steloff and the Gotham Book Mart. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965. Print.

 

Images from Post:

cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com

sonnetsat4am.blogspot.com

utzling.blogspot.com

 

Floor Plan:

Powered by thinglink.com

 

Images from Floor Plan:

bookpatrol.tumblr.com

ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com

www.studyblue.com

www.upenn.edu

 

On the Shelves of Gotham Book Mart

Gotham Book was always a traditionally small and cozy space. The very first location was a brownstone basement and Steloff would put books outside for customers to look at and to entice them inside. The inventory of that location involved into mostly theater and costume books because of the clientele, which started Gotham Book Mart off on its reputation for having rare and hard to find books available. The second location was much larger, though still cramped inside, as the space was packed with books and the aisles were narrow in order to fit as many shelves as possible. In the second location, there was a backyard and garden space where Steloff would hold parties and talks, with tables for outdoor book displays. I’m going to focus on Gotham’s Diamond District location, 41 West 47th Street, which is where the shop spent the majority of its time.

In 1946, Gotham Book Mart moved a few minutes away from its previous location to a new, bigger space. The new building didn’t have a backyard, but it had a back room and multiple stories that Steloff could make use of. In the book In Touch With Genius she talks of how many of her customers didn’t even realize she was in a new location, due to it being so close to the old one. Instead, they just remark about how she’d widened the aisles and added a back room.

Gotham Book Mart specialized in rare books that were difficult to obtain, and that stayed true throughout its moves. Steloff organized her stock into three basic categories: new, secondhand, and rare. The experimental writers were kept separate on the shelves from the more traditional writers and there was a section for first editions as well. On the ground floor of the building, there was a back room filled with shelves on which rested the rare books. There was also a locked case that contained especially rare and fragile books, and the customers weren’t allowed to handle those books without an employee looking over them. In the corner of the back room, there was a Buddha statue and a bronze bust of James Joyce done by Jo Davidson and autographed in the original clay by Joyce himself. Most of the things in the room were on wheels or were collapsible so that they could be easily moved out of the room and folding chairs could be moved in the case of a lecture or reading being held there.

The cellar was off limits to non-staff and contained Gotham Book Mart’s overflow stock and books that Steloff was holding on to until they could be sold, since there was not a return policy with the publishers until later and Steloff was fond of holding onto books until there was a desire for them. This book storage cellar was generally referred to as “the cellar”. The second floor of the shop was a gallery where Gotham Book Mart would display various artists’ pieces and hold exhibitions. The James Joyce Society also held meeting in the second floor gallery after it was founded. Steloff lived in an apartment on the third floor, which had French doors leading out to a balcony that faced and overlooked 47th street. After her death, the third floor apartment was converted into a rare books room. The fourth floor was likely used for further storage, and the fifth floor became the living quarters for Andreas Brown, to whom Steloff had sold the store at that point.

Sources don’t really go into specifics about what genres graced the shelves of Gotham Book Mart, just that they were generally rare and secondhand books, as well as new books by unknown of little known authors. I imagine that there were still a number of theater or costume books left over from Steloff’s time in the theater district, as well as some titles deemed obscene that Steloff defended. In her memoir, she mentions a man coming in and looking for a book with an illustration of a specific stained glass pattern, which, after looking through several books of stained glass illustrations, he was able to find. She also stocked small literary magazines and new publications from poets and authors that she felt deserved recognition and that she wanted to help. These were usually displayed towards the front of the store in her other locations, so I assume that it would be the same in the 41 West 47th Street location. After Steloff’s death and Brown took over running Gotham Book Mart, the stock changed slightly. The store still specialized in rare and secondhand books, but they also branched out into other merchandise, such as T-shirts that were sold in conjunction with gallery showings for different artists.

Something Benjamin talks about in his article, Unpacking My Library, is that things have value, but the value that it has comes from the person inspecting it or possessing it. Things are only valuable if people want them, which is something Steloff knew. This principle was mostly the reason beh

ind her buying up the last of someone’s print run and keeping them for years until someone came in who wanted them and who would buy them. Instead of putting these books on the shelves as soon as she obtained them and not getting a lot of money for them, she would instead wait until they became a little more difficult to find or perhaps until the authors was better known and people wanted to read their earlier works. By waiting for the value people placed on these books to increase, Steloff could get more money for them, so they also became more valuable to her as time went by. The idea of having a responsibility to your books or to your collection can also be applied to Gotham Book Mart, especially the rare books that customers weren’t allowed to handle without supervision. Gotham had a responsibility to protect these rare and sometimes fragile books and it was also the customer’s responsibility to treat these books well and to protect them.

Gotham Book Mart, even in its larger locations, was always jammed full of books, with books filling the shelves, stacked on top of the shelves and on tables between the shelves. It exuded a cozy atmosphere and surrounded the customer with literature and pictures of literary figures, so that he customer was completely immersed in books and in literature.

 

Sources

Text

Benjamin, Unpacking My Bookstore

Frances Steloff, In Touch With Genius

Web

http://www.newyorkboundbooks.com/2013/08/19/wise-men-fish-here/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotham_Book_Mart

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/24/arts/literary-fishing-hole-gets-a-for-sale-sign-bookshop-seeking-less-chaotic-home.html

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/05/13/020513ta_talk_sheehan

Images

http://www.flashpointmag.com/butecam3.htm

http://lynngilbert.wordpress.com

A Walk Through The First Location Of Gotham Book Mart

The First Space

The original location of Gotham Book Mart, also referred to as GBM, was a small basement space on 128 West 45th Street near the theater district in New York City, New York. It was originally called Gotham Art and Book Mart. The space for the store was on the right side of the street, Hudson Theater was a couple of doors away, Lyceum Theater was across the street, and next door to the original shop was Claire’s dress shop.

Hudson Theater Hudson Theater    Lyceum Theater Lyceum Theater

Steloff talks about the first time that she toured the space saying, “I asked the woman there about the space, and she took me around the back way. As she stood in the doorway between the two rooms-one had been the dining room, the other the kitchen with a huge built-in stove still there partly boarded-up.  It was a brownstone English basement, three steps down, which was set back between two remodeled buildings. I looked in the window, which had an old cloth stretched across the inside. The door was also draped…if I would want the back room later on, it could also be arranged.  Here at least I would have the front room and the window, small though it was, entirely to myself” (Steloff 749-750).  In the shop, it is said by the owner that “only the west wall of the room had shelves-that was all I could afford.  On the opposite side, next to the fireplace, was a bookcase which I had brought from my own apartment, and there was a rather long table spread with books” (Steloff 755).

“We took everything that could be used in the shop: bookcases, table, desk, chairs, pictures, and books.  I spent the day arranging the books to make the best showing, as there weren’t enough to fill half the shelves on the one side. The opposite wall had a fireplace with gas logs and a marble mantle, my bookcase on one side and a borrowed bookcase on the other, and above them prints” (Steloff 751).  Frances Steloff made her bookstore feel like a home away from home to her customers.  She created a store ambiance that made her clientele feel like “house guests in a relaxed yet exciting enviroinment” (Miller 94).  David came in the evening, and I went out for food. He brought some old novels the salesmen had given him as they were published. They helped to fill the empty shelves. The next morning the sign was put up and I was ready for business” (Steloff 751).  Steloff goes on to write, “Gordon Whyte was one of the earliest friends of GBM. He came in a week or two after we opened and was delighted to find an out-of-print book that he had been searching for for years. He looked over all the books I had. Only the west wall of the room had shelves-that was all I could afford. On the opposite side, next to the fireplace, was a bookcase which I had brought from my own apartment, and there was a rather long table spread with books. It didn’t take Gordon Whyte long to look over my stock” (Steloff 755).  For what the collection lacked in quantity, it made up for in quality.  Steloff’s customers stayed true to her, and her store, and returned many times to purchase books and to enjoy Steloff’s company.  Below is the floor plan for the first location of Gotham Book Mart.

 

 

“Things” Sold in Gotham Book Mart

Frances Steloff sold things, not objects, within her store.  Her items had innate value because Steloff had chosen them herself.  A blog stated that, “Frances Steloff opened Gotham Book Mart in 1920 after selling books from her window with a sign that said “Interesting Books Selected by Myself” (“Wise”).  To Steloff’s customers, this statement is all that needs to be known about GBM.  The owner had impeccable taste and chose each and every copy of each book that she bought and sold, making this collection her own.  In his work, Thing Theory, Bill Brown writes, “things do not exist without being full of people” (Brown 12).  This is certainly true within the walls of Gotham Book Mart.  These novels and their innate quality would not exist if it were not for Frances Steloff.

A blogger wrote that, “The Gotham and Miss Steloff championed the experimental and challenged the censors over the years.  She supplied James Joyce’s books to US readers as they were published, including those with legal difficulties from the US’s obscenity laws, a service she also provided for D.H. Lawrence and Henry Miller’s work.  She was one of the founding members of the James Joyce Society,and Joyce himself occasionally ordered books directly from Miss Steloff” (“Wise”).  Many of the pieces that were sold by Steloff were second-hand items.  Morgan says, “Much of her [Steloff’s] buying was of second-hand books; she held them until they were wanted, and then sold. Indeed, if a desirable title was not available, GBM was adamant about getting it out to the public” (Morgan 741).

 

Works Cited

Text:

Brown, Bill. “Thing Theory.” Critical Inquiry 28.1 (2001): 1. Print.

“Gotham Book Mart.” – WoD Gotham. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. <http://wiki.wodgotham.com/index.php?title=Gotham_Book_Mart>.

“J O H N N Y D E P P Z O N E • Information.” J O H N N Y D E P P Z O N E • Information. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. <http://www.johnnydepp-zone.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=7>.

“Jackie as Editor: The Literary Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (Google EBook).”Google Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. <http://books.google.com/books?id=naxsJlzGD3wC>.

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

Steloff, Frances. “In Touch With Genius.” Journal of Modern Literature 4.April (n.d.): 749-882. Print.

“Wise Men Have Fished Here: Homage to the Gotham Book Mart | Bud Parr. The Personal Site of Bud Parr.” Bud Parr The Personal Site of Bud Parr RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. <http://www.budparr.com/article/wise-men-have-fished-here-homage-to-the-gotham-book-mart>.

Images:

“Encore Editions – Fine Prints and Frames since 1996.” Hudson Theatre and the Quality Shop, New York, N.Y. Print. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. <http://www.encore-editions.com/hudson-theatre-and-the-quality-shop-new-york-n-y>.

“New York City Structures: Lyceum Theatre.” The Epoch Times » The Epoch Times Is an Independent Voice in Print and on the Web. We Report News Responsibly and Truthfully so That Readers Can Improve Their Own Lives and Increase Their Understanding and Respect for Their Neighbors next Door and around the Globe. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2013. <http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/united-states/new-york-city-structures-lyceum-theatre-162615.html>.

 

A Look Back at Gotham Book Mart: Place and People

The Gotham Book Mart was a hub for avant garde literature and a center of culture for the 87 years that it was in business. There were many factors that contributed to the success, popularity, and importance of Gotham Book Mart: the literary climate of the early- and mid- 20th century, its location in the heart of New York City, the demand for banned or censored books, the need for a physical location for these cultural figures to congregate, and so on. But beyond all of these factors, one person stands out as being undeniably instrumental to the success of Gotham Books: Frances Steloff. Now, it would be misguided to suggest that one person could be the sole cause of Gotham’s success; there were many ingredients that went into the mix. However, Steloff’s ambition, persistence, and business-savvy was the king pin that held the other pieces in place. Even after she sold the Gotham Book Mart, the spirit of her bookshop largely remained the same. As a result, much of this post will focus on the ‘place and people’ of Gotham Book Mart’s past vis-a-vis Frances Steloff.

Frances Steloff

Humble beginnings

Frances Steloff was born in 1887 to a poor immigrant family in Sarasota Springs, NY. She attended school until the the seventh grade when she was removed in order to work for a family in the Boston area. In 1907, at the age of 20, Steloff moved to New York City, where she found work at Loeser’s department store selling corsets. Soon after starting work at the department store, Steloff was put in charge of the store’s magazine/book section, and within a year doubled the department’s sales. Despite the negativity that  surrounded book-selling in department stores around WWII, and the criticism these stores faced from people in the book industry (Miller), Steloff’s position at Loeser’s is what enabled her to find her calling as a purveyor of the written word.

First opening and establishing roots

In 1920, after working at an assortment of publishers in the city, Steloff opened the Gotham Art and Book Mart at 128 W 45th street in the theater district. This was a bold move for a woman during this time: most women in their thirties were settling down and focusing on establishing a domicile and a family; Steloff, on the other hand, was venturing into the world of business. In Gotham Book Mart’s early years, the shop served as a place for actors and people involved in the theater world to congregate and purchase literature. Steloff recognized that the location of the store, in the theater district, would define much of the business and clientele of the shop, and as a result she fostered this community of patrons by stocking rare and obscure plays. After three years on 45th St., however, the store moved to 51 W 47th street, where it changed its name to the shorter “Gotham Book Mart” and erected its famous “Wise Men Fish Here” sign. At its new location, the store developed a reputation for stocking avant garde and banned books—such as Tropic of Cancer and Lady Chatterley’s Lover—which drew literati and the culturally curious alike. This location was also where the tradition of Gotham Book Mart “garden parties” started, which began as a series of lectures but eventually became occasions for book releases. Literary celebrities and major cultural figures would attend these parties, and at its height Gotham was hosting more than 40 per year.

 

"A December 1948 party for Osbert and Edith Sitwell (seated, center) drew a roomful of bright lights to the Gotham Book Mart: clockwise from W. H. Auden, on the ladder at top right, were Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell, Charles Henri Ford (cross-legged, on the floor), William Rose Benét, Stephen Spender, Marya Zaturenska, Horace Gregory, Tennessee Williams, Richard Eberhart, Gore Vidal and José Garcia Villa." (NY Times)

A household name in an unlikely neighborhood

In 1946 Gotham Book Mart moved to 41 W 47th street, the location the store would call home the longest (58 years) and where the store established its broadest community of writers and notable cultural figures (W.H. Auden, Marianne Moore, and Dylan Thomas were all frequent patrons at this location). Steloff was also deeply invested in fostering the growth and promotion of up-and-coming artists—she shared Tebbel’s belief that “as the middle[wo]man…the bookseller is not only the conduit between author and audience, but in the conduct of business [she] is in a position to influence that relationship profoundly, whether for good or ill” (in Steloff’s case, it was clearly for good). She continued to host book releases and took risks on authors’ first works, as well as starting a “Writer’s Relief Fund,” which aimed to help writers in financial need while by accepting donations from established artists and patrons. (The project, however, was not very successful due to the large number of beneficiaries and the small number of benefactors). Steloff also hired up-and-coming writers and artists to work at her store, such as Allen Ginsberg, LeRoi Jones, and Tennessee Williams (though Williams only lasted one day).

 

Diamond District
Left, Diamond District in 1943; right, diamond district in 2008

Although business proliferated at the store on 41 W 47th St., Gotham Book Mart’s success in this neighborhood is in some ways a surprise. The address of 41 W 47th St. is at the heart of the Diamond District, an area of Midtown Manhattan with a high concentration of diamond and jewelry retailers. During the 1940s, the Diamond District saw a boom in business with the influx of Jewish diamond dealers who were forced to flee Antwerp and Amsterdam during WWII. In a neighborhood that specialized in diamonds and jewelry, and at a time when business was thriving, how is it that Gotham Books managed to be so successful in such an unlikely environment? I would posit that this success was largely due to Steloff and her determination as the shop’s owner. A shrewd business woman who poured her life into her store, she embodied the archetype of the passionate bookseller whose goal is to create a flourishing community and to adapt to the needs and demands of her customer base.

 

The sale of Gotham and its late decline

In 1967, at the age of 80, Frances Steloff sold Gotham Book Mart to Andreas Brown. After its sale, Steloff remained a ‘consultant’ for the bookstore and a constant present in the shop. Though Gotham Books remained an important cultural landmark and a major independent bookstore, its position as a meeting place for high profile artists and intellectuals began to wane. There are two factors that largely contributed to this decline: notable cultural and literary figures were less present in the community around the bookstore, and the store saw a gradual resignation from Steloff as she aged. Without a strong constituency of cultural figures in and out of the shop, and with the woman behind the scenes unable to field new authors and cultivate a community based around literature and learning, the store’s struggle seemed inevitable.

Gotham Book Mart remained open long after its sale to Brown; even after Steloff’s death in 1989, the ex-owner’s lingering spirit likely helped keep the store open for close to another twenty years. Even if the Gotham Books was no longer a meeting place for elite literati and artists, the place remained “a locus of collective memory—a site where [an experience] is created [for the consumer] through the construction of memories linking a group of people into the past” (Harvey).

During the 1990s and early 2000s, Gotham Books ran into legal issues over the building on 47th St. In a last-ditch effort to keep their doors open, Gotham Book Mart moved to 16 E 46th St. in 2004, but would only remain in this location until 2007 before closing for good.

https://mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zLtjLvpSJhTE.ka_wL1NgppdI

 

 

Sources

Maps embedded by Google

 

Images

Frances Steldoff  <http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_lW4bdAZDrFM/RmAv4a-i4dI/AAAAAAAAAF4/eKU2Iyz05jU/s400/gotham40317.jpg>

Gathering at Gotham Book Mart <http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/01/02/nyregion/gothamliterary-480.jpg>

Diamond District <http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/08/31/realestate/31scap2_600.jpg>

 

Images in Timeline

Loeser’s <http://cdn.dipity.com/uploads/events/dcb2c00310b93e48a857afbee77c70e1_1M.png>

“Wise Men…” <http://cdn.dipity.com/uploads/events/83e49a7624ccfb61d1a79d2abb2b66a0_1M.png>

Joyce <http://cdn.dipity.com/uploads/events/c6408d111cb5c59bc8455f5c6b6f4321_1M.png>

Store Closing <http://cdn.dipity.com/uploads/events/380d3bed01747b007a0cc0488ecf3c75_1M.png>

UPenn Crest <http://cdn.dipity.com/uploads/events/780042afcde03fd8c22b59da65057c81_1M.png>

 

Texts

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

John Tebbel, “A Brief History of American Bookselling.” Bookselling in America and the World: Some Observations & Recollections. ed. Anderson, Charles B. New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book, 1975. Print.

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

Morgan, Kathleen. “Frances Steloff and the Gotham Book Mart.” Journal of Modern Literature (1975): 737-48. Print.

Gotham Book Mart: Small Beginnings to Grand Futures

Frances Steloff founded Gotham Book Mart on January 1st, 1920. Steloff was born in 1877 in Saratoga Springs, New York, and grew up very poor with little access to books. In 1907, she moved to New York City and found a job at a shop selling corsets at Loeser’s Department Store. Loeser’s also had a rare books department that was run by George Mischke. Mischke initiated Steloff into the world of first-editions and print books and later helped her set up her own shop.

In 1920, she bought the lease on a brownstone English basement that was being used as a tailor’s shop in the Theater District. The shop was first named Gotham Book and Art and was located at 128 West 45th Street. The rent was $75 a month and her stock initially consisted of 175 volumes. Her first sale after opening was to Glenn Hunter, who bought a costume book on his way to the Hudson Theater down the street. After his performance, he came back with his roommate and they each bought several more books. After that, many more actors would come into the shop in the evenings after their performances, which prompted her to keep the shop open until midnight. Her clientele dictated her stock and, because they were interested in costume, design, and art books, Gotham became famous for its ability to provide hard-to-get and expensive books on theater. Steloff also began an extensive mail order service, specializing in old and rare books, as well as new books.

One summer in the 20s, just as Gotham was beginning to get started, Steloff remembers, in her memoir In Touch With Genius, how she was afraid the slow summer business would be the end of her shop almost as soon as it had began. A man came up to the window then to look over the books and started making a pile of them. Describing him, she says, “his pants were baggy at the knees, his shirt was open at the neck, his hair was tousseled, and he didn’t look like he could afford to buy any books” but he picked out his books, asked for the price, and then asked for them to be taken to the Hippodrome Theater, where the cashier would pay for them. The books came to $299 and she asked a porter boy to take them down to the theater. After he left with the books, she panicked that she would lose both the money and the books and then the shop would be done for, but the boy came back with all the money. After tipping him a dollar, she had $298 dollars, her customer had been R.H. Burnside, the Stage Director at the Hippodrome, and her bills would be paid.

Like Christopher Morley’s wandering bookseller, Roger, Steloff stocked and sold book based on what the people in the area wanted. While just starting out in the Theater District, her customers were mostly actors and playwrights who were interested in books pertaining to theater and who got off work late into the night. Like Roger’s ability to predict what kinds of books might appeal to what people, Steloff also adapted her stock to fit the clientele. She was also an incredibly shrewd businesswoman in that she had the almost uncanny ability to predict future sales of books. Often, she would buy out what was left of someone’s print run and hold onto them for years until there was a desire for them and they could be sold.

After marrying and returning from her honeymoon, Steloff moved to a larger building at 51 West 47th Street in 1923. Here, the shop’s name was changed to Gotham Book Mart and the famous sign with the phrase “Wise Men Fish Here” hung over the door. Steloff was among friends and other booksellers at her new location. In the same neighborhood were Bretano’s Bookstore, J. Ray Pec, Mischke’s new shop, and Charles P. Everitt right next door to Mischke. The Beacon Book Shop and Chaucer Head Book Shop were also nearby. Cresswell’s simplest explantion of place is “a meaningful location” and, amongst all of these other literary minds, Gotham Book Mart made itself a meaningful place for many different writers and lovers of literature (7). Steloff stocked, sold, and fought for books that had been accused of being obscene, championed small magazines, and helped to gather financial support for writer’s in need, and authors returned Steloff’s admiration by making her shop a place of pilgrimage for literary figures. Christopher Morley, Dylan Thomas, Arthur Miller, Susan Sontag, and Galway Kinnell are just a few of the authors that came in every now and then for books, attended parties, and relaxed in the back yard.

A 1948 party for Osbert and Edith Sitwell (seated, center) drew a number of other celebrities: clockwise from W. H. Auden, on the ladder at top right, were Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell, Charles Henri Ford (cross-legged, on the floor), William Rose Benét, Stephen Spender, Marya Zaturenska, Horace Gregory, Tennessee Williams, Richard Eberhart, Gore Vidal and José Garcia Villa.

Another point Cresswell talks about in Reading “A Global Sense of Place” is that place is a social construct and that places don’t just exist but are always being shaped by external social forces (57). Steloff travelled Europe buying books and also stocked expensive, limited, signed editions from new publishers. She sponsored lectures on writing, sometimes as many as 40 a year, and also hosted readings after going into publishing their own titles. Gotham Book Mart’s parties were probably what made it into the famous store people know it as.  The party for Edith Sitwell is the most famous, as Life magazine heard of it and showed up to take pictures. The James Joyce Society was also founded and held meetings at the Gotham Book Mart. Every one of these things shaped Gotham into the place it was, as well as the people that bought books from there, attended the lectures and parties, or ate lunch in the yard, as Henry Miller and his friends did.

In 1945, Steloff lost her lease and moved to the shop to a brownstone in the Diamond District at 41 West 47th Street. The shop was still a meeting place of intellectuals, and students who wished to understand more about James Joyce were sent to Steloff by their teachers in order to learn more. When she couldn’t answer all of their questions, she was inspired to found the James Joyce Society.

In 1967, she sold the store to Andreas Brown. Though she was no longer the owner, she continued to live in the apartment above the store and still worked in the shop as a consultant until her death in 1989 at the age of 101.

Frances Steloff in Gotham Book Mart

Brown sold the building in 2003 for $7.2 million dollars and opened up the store a few blocks away in 2004. The newly dubbed Gotham Book Mart & Gallery was now at 16 East 46th Street, the previous location of H.P. Kraus, a rare books store. Only a few years later in 2006, Brown fell behind on his rent and was evicted. Gotham Book Mart’s roughly $3 million inventory was auctioned off in one large lot that sold for only $400 thousand in 2007.

Since Gotham Book Mart’s beginning in 1920, Frances Steloff made the shop a kind of sanctuary for her customers where they could find what they were looking for and what they loved. Her determination and love of literature earned her many friends that would contribute to Gotham Book Mart’s legendary status in the literary world. A small basement store in the Theater District grew into a Mecca and meeting place for literary minds. Even after selling the store, she retained an active role in running it, and its continued success was greatly in part to her still being there. The kinds of books Gotham specialized in and the parties that were held there made it famous, but it was Frances Steloff who made people feel welcome there, kept them coming back, and supported them in their work.

Sources

Images

“Wise Men Fish Here” Sign – <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/01/keeping-the-got.html>

Window Display – <http://forbookssake.net/2011/05/20/the-gotham-book-mart/>

1948 Party – <http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/gotham-book-mart-holdings-are-given-to-penn/>

Frances Steloff – <http://www.mhpbooks.com/slideshow-turn-of-the-century-bookstores/>

Text

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

Hauptman, Robert and Joseph Rosenblum. “Frances Steloff.” American Book Collectors and Bibliograohers: Second Series. Ed. Joseph Rosenblum. Detroit: Gale Research, 1997. Dictionary of Literary Biograohy Vol. 187. Literature Resource Center. 

Morgan, Kathleen. “Introduction: Frances Steloff and the Gotham Book Mart.” Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 4, No. 4, Special Gotham Book Mart Issue (Apr., 1975), pp. 737-748

Steloff, Frances. “In Touch With Genius.” Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 4, No. 4, Special Gotham Book Mart Issue (Apr., 1975), pp. 749-882

Websites

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotham_Book_Mart>