John K. King Used and Rare Books: History Within The Page

John K. King’s Used and Rare Books had a very mobile history, but the greatest shifts took place in its literary stocks.

Everything in this world has a history behind it, and it’s through this recollection of the past that we gain an insight into the subject at hand. John K. King’s Used and Rare Books is no different, for the rich history behind this bookstore clearly demonstrates how it has come to be recognized as one of the greatest in the world. When considering everything that has transpired to define this establishment, the subsets of place and literature come to the forefront. Tim Cresswell, made famous for his studies surrounding human geography, published a piece of writing entitled “Place” that thoroughly set the standard for how such is to be understood in this modern age. “But place is also a way of seeing, knowing, and understanding the world.” (Cresswell 11) By observing how this bookstore, being the “place,” underwent its various shifts in location, we can hope to gain an idea of how to understand it within the context of this world. Though the history of John K. King Used and Rare Books is occupied with significant instances of physical transitioning, a far more noteworthy series of changes were occurring to the literature. An amassment of over one-million books doesn’t come about in a day, but it was the diligent work of John K. King himself that collected this surplus of literature over his many years in the business.

John K. King was a man devoted to literature, and it was this deep interest that spurred the creation of his now world famous bookstore.

To begin understanding John K. King Used and Rare Books, we first have to explore how this bookstore initially came into fruition. In some of the earliest accounts of John K. King, he was noted for having a deep passion for books and antiques. With the heavily influential support of his high school guidance counselor, King was inspired to transform his interest into a profession as he opened up his very first bookstore in Dearborn, Michigan (1965). Operating out of the location for six years, King made good use of this hub in his bookselling efforts, but the need for more space to accommodate his ever expanding collection of books pushed him to relocate.

In 1971, John K. King made the decision to transfer his bookstore from Dearborn to the Michigan Theatre Building, which had a very prominent position in the Downtown district of Detroit. For the beginning years after the move, this old theatre served King well with an upgraded capacity in comparison to his first location. However, the issue of finding enough room for his increasing stock of literature once again became a major concern. The Michigan Theatre happened to have a number of empty offices in its upper floors, and these spare rooms were a temporary fix for King’s dilemma. Renting out many of these sections in the upstairs of the building, he now had further storage for his growing collection. However, this solution soon proved more impractical than anything else. Accessing any of the books that were housed in these offices required quite a journey, and the amount of money it was costing King to continue renting them quickly added up. Having realized the need to further his growing business, John K. King finally decided to purchase a building of his very own.

The Advance Glove factory was purchased by King in 1983 and has served as the central location for John K. King Used and Rare Books ever since.

When 1983 rolled around, a famous establishment in the industrial section of Detroit found itself on the auction block. The building was none other than the Advance Glove factory, which had long been abandoned at 901 West Lafayette. Interestingly enough, this building had a considerable history of its own before settling in its current location. Advance Glove Manufacturing had experienced several relocations and one catastrophic fire before finding a base of operations in Downtown Detroit during the 1940’s. Even after that, the business had to change its location once again, for a project, entitled the John C. Lodge Expressway, threatened many of the establishments in the industrial district. Shifting a mere 600 feet, the Advance Glove factory moved to the same spot that it stands in to this very day. Although this building had a rich past of its own, it was its immense area that drew King in. The old factory boasted four spacious floors perfect for the amount of inventory he would later move in.

It didn’t take long for John K. King to fill out all of his newly acquired space, for shortly after its purchase, the Advance Glove factory housed thousands of books on every floor. King was a man always looking to collect more and more, so it should come as no surprise that he later underwent another expansion after purchasing even more property. Referred to as the Otis Elevator building, this office complex sat directly behind John K. King Used and Rare Books, making it an optimal piece of property for his needs. Acquisition of these offices provided King with the opportunity to appropriately divide his stock into rare and common pieces. Now, the upper floor of the Otis Elevator building serves as the primary location for all of the rare literature and material that King comes across in his business ventures. As for the rest of the building, it’s just more convenient space for none other than his consistent influx of used books.

The books that find their way into King’s store are not bound by condition or language.

The physical history of John K. King Used and Rare Books is essential in understanding its “place,” just as Tim Cresswell would agree. King’s bookstore has undergone many significant shifts in location, and all of these have had their own effect on how this outlet for used and rare books is perceived by the public. While this transition possessed a prominence of its own, there was an even greater evolution occurring as King continued to expand his library of books. As more and more literature poured into his possession, the possibility of finding something that would appeal to a particular consumer became ever more likely. This expanding variety of King’s bookstore immediately made me think of the excerpt, “Jewish Bookstores of the Old East.” It was mentioned how “Here in this shop you may get in Yiddish Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Tolstoy, Gorki, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Dante, Swineburne, Shelley, and various other great writers in all languages.” This plethora of excellent books with their multitude of translations is exactly the kind of material that finds its way into King’s shop, and subsequently the same type of literature that enriches his store with historical value.

A glimpse into the kinds of rare literature that can be found in John K. King Used and Rare Books.

In John K. King Used and Rare Books, the extent of his stock isn’t limited to traditional literature either. While the writing of famous authors is readily available for anyone interested, other unique pieces, like autographs, archives, and photographs can also be found among the shelves. Noteworthy examples of such include the automotive manuals of Dodge and Delorean, autographs of celebrities, and even original photographs of Mark Twain himself. Over the course of a lifetime, John K. King has amassed a collection of literature unseen by any other independent bookstore. Some of the most recent surveys even have the number of books in his inventory estimated at over 1 million, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

John K. King Used and Rare books is an extraordinary bookstore ripe with historical value. Its physical changes echo the progressive growth the establishment has undergone since its conception in 1965, but its literature holds the richness with which the store is imbued. Every book that navigates its way into John K. King’s possession has a history of its own that you could only begin to speculate on. Each page of a story is infused with value readily available for some curious reader to recognize. To think that an establishment that now hosts more than 1 million books began with a passionate reader operating out of Dearborn, Michigan is only a testament to just how much history lies behind John K. King Used and Rare books.

 

References

Texts

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

“Jewish Bookstores of the Old East.” The Exchange 1981, 1996: 17. Print.

Website Resources

http://www.kingbooksdetroit.com/about-us/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_K._King_Books

https://www.timetoast.com/

Images

www.kingbooksdetroit.com

www.afar.com

reddeverywhere.blogspot.com

www.metrotimes.com

Welcome to Wonderland

Prepare to be overwhelmed. Mile High Comics’ Jason Street location is a renovated warehouse home to thousands upon thousands of comic books and paperbacks, a wide array of toys and collectibles, and more merchandise than any one person would ever need.

This megastore may have 60,000 square feet, 45,000 of which is retail space, but it leaves no room for a romanticized visage of how a bookstore is expected to appear. You will not find any baristas serving Starbucks coffee nor will you find cushioned chairs with armrests gently placed in a quiet nook. The store’s layout caters to a different type of literary consumer, one who enters the store knowing full well what they like and what they plan on finding it, with or without help from the staff. In this way, the customers who step into this store are a specialized group of people as any who don’t fit within the parameters of comic book lover, enthusiast, or aficionado can be deterred and avoid the store altogether. It is not with an elitist attitude. Rather, the megastore realizes the niche that it fulfills, the specialized type of consumer it caters to on a day-to-day basis.

The store is a culmination of old and new comic books, collectible merchandise and trinkets, apparel, and more on one floor only and completely out in the open. Many of the comics can be viewed on multiple display tables soon after you enter the red door into the wonderland of a warehouse. They can be seen laid out flat, sitting upright, in packing boxes, or piled high and low. This is the general area of the store’s comics which boasts the sign “$1.00 COMICS,” no doubt a steal of a deal, and definitely a place to visit, but perhaps that’s not the reason you walked in today. Maybe you wanted to take a gander at the collectibles right next to the section housing the books about comics. Perhaps you came in to make a straight beeline toward the back of the store to peruse the new comic books section that wraps around the corner of the store, overtaking more than half the length of the wall. This way you’d be able to explore the merchandise adjacent to the new comic books, but you’d be bypassing the children’s section which is always worth a peek. You could have just wandered in by chance, knowing what you want, but you take advantage of the help desk that guards the hallowed display of Bronze, Silver, and Golden Age comic books. The only area off-limits to the public is the “back room” inventory with a look-but-don’t-touch rule. Feel free to roam all throughout the expansive store otherwise, as shown in this video.

Comic books are the lifeblood running through this space, transforming it into something beyond a place of concrete and foundation. They are things that unite a myriad of people. Bruno Latour states that “[a] thing is, in one sense an object out there and, in another sense, an issue very much in there, at any rate, a gathering,” (2288); and the properties of comics as things make them a matter of concern for those who harbor a love for them. A comic book can invite any two people together, no matter how different they may be, and act as a conduit for conversation. This conversation between fans of the same comic book, regarding the characters, the art style, or even the artist, will establish a bond between those two people. However, the scope that a comic book can bring people together expands much farther than just two people to whole dedicated followings whether that’s for the book itself or the artist. Within these followings there is a sense of commonplace amongst the members and while they vary in race, class, sex, and identified gender, their shared love equates them to simply “fans.” And with this, the fans form a society amongst each other that is exclusive to those who too love comics as much as the other members, if not moreso. Their society is welcome to and expected, in a sense, to thrive within the comic book store where the materials needed to support and fuel them can be found.

Viewing comics as objects does not detract from the sense of community that they can provide for the fan culture that absorbs them. One of the major aspects of comic books is their potentiality for being able to be collected. Serialized comic books tend to be collected for the sake of continuity while rare issues are obtained for the value, monetarily and culturally, that they possess. James Clifford discusses the act of collecting as a form of collecting culture, collecting life itself in his essay “On Collecting Art and Culture,” describing what a good collector does and what his/her collection represents. Reflective and tasteful, the good collector is able to know the history of the objects he/she is collecting while also being able to label them accordingly (219). The collection is what is valued while “any private fixation on single objects is negatively marked as fetishism,” (219) and this is true concerning comic book collecting. A major trait attributed with comic books is the act of collecting them. An entire collection holds more value than a single issue as the collection can compile the history of a comic book series, the progress of the artist, and the history of comics themselves. It is the complete cohesiveness of the series or story being told through the comic books that causes people, through sheer determination, to acquire as many that they potentially can. The megastore fulfills this desire in the best possible way by offering nearly all of Mile High Comics inventory underneath one roof. This is the reputation that the megastore does it best to uphold for its consumers and rarely does it disappoint in its endeavors.

Mile High Comics’ megastore boasts a display that takes the viewer through a chronological journey through the Bronze, Silver, and Golden Ages of comics, a history that spans nearly 50 years. The value of this collection is immeasurable because of the culture that it reflects, but also it solidifies the megastore’s claim that it is the largest comic book store in America and none can surpass it. It reflects the company’s own philosophy of remembrance for the origin of comics while the rest of the store shows where comics are headed as time moves along. The space is a testament to the importance that comic books have and will continue to have on both the art and literature worlds.

Sources:

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

Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. 2282-302. Print.

Images:

Courtesy of Mile High Comics’ Website <http://www.milehighcomics.com>

The Pursuit of Educating

cats
The bookstore cats lounging among GBM’s shelves

Each bookstore owner has a definition of literature promoted in his or her shop. For example, in Parnassus on Wheels, the fictional bookseller Roger Mifflin has his own interpretation of literature’s function in society. The character believes that the book is meant to enlighten, enrich, and connect its audience, stating, “there is none so grateful as the man to whom you have given just the book his soul needed and he never knew it” (Morley).  In conjunction with this interpretation, many believe that the bookstore should be a place for people to learn which literature should be read and which has less value. Such was the belief possessed by Frances Steloff, who owned and operated Gotham Book Mart for forty seven years. Steloff fits this mold by influencing her customers to read what she sees as “real literature” in her shop.  Steloff’s focus on modernist literature, which experimented with new styles and concepts, clashed with her Orthodox Jewish background. Steloff’s ultimate goal was to develop the book into a higher form of art and to educate those around her, which parallels her personal history as well as her business plan at GBM.

Frances Steloff in front of Gotham at its third location in the Diamond District
Frances Steloff in front of GBM at its third location in the Diamond District.

Gotham Book Mart was a hub for avant garde literature, in addition to being  a center of culture. There were many factors that contributed to the success, popularity, and importance of Gotham Book Mart.  Some of these include the literary climate of the early- and mid-20th century, its locations in the heart of New York City, the demand for banned books, as well as the need for a location for authors and artists to congregate.  Frances  Steloff, however, stands above these factors as being integral to the success of GBM.  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 combination of ambition, persistence, and business-savvy was the kingpin that held the pieces in place. Even after she sold Gotham Book Mart in 1967, the spirit of her bookshop largely remained the same.

Steloff was born in 1887 to a poor Jewish immigrant family in Saratoga 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. Although Steloff’s education ceased, her family kept her intellectually occupied by exposing her to literature.  Her father, for example, was a lover of literature who passed his passion onto her.  Steloff’s father loved books and would pour over them for hours.  There is no doubt that this father fostered his daughter’s passion for reading with his behavior (Rodgers 30).   Even when she was a child, Steloff’s relationship with books was certainly one of love and not solely function.

As if inspired by the strong female characters in the classic novels Steloff read after being pulled out of school, she left her family at the age of twenty to move to New York City.  Steloff often turned to these strong women during her childhood, where she was faced “adult experiences before she ever entered the teens” (24).  These literary and tragic moments “taught her to be independent” (24).  By the time she was able to escape her family in Boston and move in with her aunt in New York City, it was 1907.  The city itself provided her with  a job selling corsets in Loeser’s Department Store.

gotham front
An artist’s rendering of the culture center that was GBM

The break in her education, the inheritance of a passion for literature, and her experience working at Loeser’s, as well as various publishing houses, inspired Steloff to open Gotham Book Mart in 1920. GBM’s first location, a basement-apartment-turned-store at the heart of New York City’s Theater District, became a defining learning experience for Steloff.   Not only did she learn about various elements of theater by reading each book that she had in her stock, she also learned to base her business plan —from inventory to events—off of her customers.

Gotham_Book_Mart_Wise_Men_Fish_Here_Sign
GBM’s iconic sign harps back to the store’s culture of enlightening customers

GBM’s customers, like Steloff, cherished books on an intellectual and perhaps even spiritual level, instead of just in a utilitarian sense. Often, Steloff purchased the last of someone’s print run and stored those books in the cellar of her shop.  She would keep them in storage until enough people deemed them valuable enough to purchase. Books weren’t valued for their practical worth, but for their literary value or ability to enlighten the reader. In this way, books were only valuable if someone ascribed value to them.   In the same way her family members were literary guides to her, she was a guide to her customers.  This role allowed for Gotham Book Mart to be so successful that it had to take on a newer, bigger location.

Gotham Book Mart spent three years at its second location on 45th St., where it erected its famous “Wise Men Fish Here” sign. This location was also where the tradition of Gotham Book Mart’s “garden parties” started.  They began as a series of lectures but eventually became occasions for book releases.  While Steloff quickly outgrew this location, her focus on educating her customers through modernist literature continued to define her business.  This was not an easy task for a woman entrepreneur during this time, but can be compared to experiences of other female bookstore owners, such as Madge Jenison.  Both Jenison and Steloff opened their bookstores in New York in the 1920s.  In Madge Jenison’s Sunwise Turn, she talks about this same drive to influence the habits of customers and establish a bookstore.  Madge Jenison’s bookstore, like GBM, was a place where people flocked, with the aim of becoming a part of an enlightened atmosphere.   This modern-enlightened feel was emphasized by GBM’s contemporary inventory.

The traditions that GBM established in its first two locations carried over to its third location on 47th St. when it moved in 1946.  This sparkling address in the Diamond District was where the store called home the longest.  When she moved to the bigger and more spacious building in the heart of Manhattan’s Diamond District, her Jewish heritage became an advantage. When the German Nazis invaded the Netherlands as well as Belgium, thousands of Orthodox Jews fled to the United States and brought their diamond businesses with them when they settled in Manhattan. After fleeing from her Jewish heritage as a young woman, Steloff found herself surrounded by a Jewish community once again after moving GBM into the Diamond District.  Although there’s no evidence that she attempted to connect with this community, neighboring Jewish store owners were welcoming to the female, Jewish small business owner.


View GBM Locations 2 in a larger map

The new, spacious building was physically larger, but it remained stacked high with books. Additionally, the shop was still a meeting place and sanctuary for literary minds.  The homey, yet educated atmosphere created a type of safe haven, a sanctuary, in which readers and writers were able to escape mainstream literature in an effort to further enlighten themselves with contemporary, repressed books.

Steloff’s childhood influences were apparent in the layout of GBM’s third location. The sanctuary was organized into three categories: new, secondhand, and rare. New books were displayed towards the front of the store.  These were typically literary magazines or books by new artists that Steloff believed in and thought deserving of some help in starting their careers. Meanwhile, rare books were kept in a locked case, and customers weren’t allowed to open the case or handle the books without employee supervision. Keeping “high value” books in cases and not allowing people to touch them was a tradition Steloff learned from her father.  When she was a child, her father “forbid her” to touch the books he saw as having a high value, and also kept them in a case for his own use.  While her father’s shelved books were religious, such as the Torah (29), Steloff placed this value on contemporary literature.

Along with contemporary literature, Steloff firmly believed in stocking banned or censored books. These books wouldn’t have necessarily been the kind of books that were read or promoted by the typical Jewish woman. Steloff, though, was by no means typical, and put herself on the line with the law for the kind of literature she believe should have a chance to be read, regardless of its controversial content.

According to Brown, there is a difference in value between what he calls ‘objects’ and ‘things.’ Those who frequented GBM, such as W.H. Auden, Marianne Moore, and Dylan Thomas, would consider books to be objects as opposed to things because “as they circulate through our lives, we look through objects (to see what they disclose about history, society, nature, or culture-above all, what they disclose about us), but we only catch a glimpse of things” (Brown 4). Books can be used in order to look deeper into ourselves and to understand something about society that we can’t get elsewhere.  Therefore, the book collector/purveyor has “a relationship to objects which does not emphasize their functional, utilitarian value—that is, their usefulness—but studies and loves them as the scene, the stage, of their useful fate” (Benjamin 60).  During her adulthood Steloff, then, was seen as the director who showed customers the books in which he or she could find this insight.

Gotham_Book_Mart
A display of “censored” books at the third location of GBM.

Additionally, Steloff was 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” (17). Steloff thought of literature as knowledge that connected people, catering to intellectual thinkers and societies. This speaks to the culture that GBM also embodied.  This culture being that the customer should be enlightened by the literature he or she discovers in the store.  In order to accomplish this, Steloff saw herself as a guide to introduce what she considered “real” literature.

Today, the narrow building at 41 W. 47th Street in the Diamond district is no longer Gotham Book Mart, but continues to cater to the community’s needs.  GBM’s former location hosts a jewelry store and a kosher Middle Eastern restaurant.  The success of these businesses parallels the area’s demographic, which is mostly Jewish white-collar workers. The reason these workers reside and shop in the district is its close vicinity, a two block walk, to Rockefeller Center, Madison Avenue, and Bryant Park.  These locations are like where this population works.  As a restaurant and jewelry store, GBM’s former location continues to act as a place of service.  However, instead of serving education, it provides food and jewelry.  The Middle Eastern restaurant advertises “speedy service,” which fits the needs of business people in need of fast service, close to work during their brief lunch breaks.  Meanwhile, the diamond store provides a place for white-collar workers and tourists to purchase fine jewelry.  To this day, the building hosts small businesses with Jewish owners.


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Young women at a booksigning in GBM, a part of the literary connections Steloff wanted to promote.

Altogether, GBM’s culture of serving customers via enlightenment and education found in books spotlights the reason for the bookstore’s early success that started at the first location.   GBM was “the material setting for social relations-the actual shape of place with which people conduct their lives as individuals… It is clear that places almost always have a concrete form…  Places then, are material things” (Cresswell 7).  In that way, it became a place where people could come together for social interactions and learning.  Truly, GBM was a community and “a physical place and a set of ideals juxtaposed to the world…implies social bonds based on effective ties and mutual support” (Miller 119).  Customers in societies, as well as Steloff herself, supported each other’s learning in this social space.  Due to this mutual support between Steloff and her customers, GBM was able to be successful.  Upon opening her first store, Steloff asked a dear friend how she would know what books to sell.  His reply was one that created GBM’s definition of literature, and ultimately the culture of her bookstore: “Your customers will educate you.”  This advice, and lifelong pursuit of education, shaped Steloff’s role as well as the purpose, culture, and goals of GBM.

 

Sources

Book / Articles

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

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

Madge Jenison. The Sunwise Turn.

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

Morley, Christopher. Parnassus on Wheels. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1955. Print.

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 in Text:

http://hc-blackmilk.xf.cz/gotham-book-mart

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/bookseller-and-author-frances-steloff-standing-in-front-of-news-photo/50417272

http://www.tom-kerr.com/page7/files/8427563b14353959c98c6dd785248334-8.html

http://home.earthlink.net/~eichfr/photos.htm

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>