Magic Mirror, Magic Window: How a Feminist Bookstore in Brooklyn Both Reflects and Challenges its Gentrified Neighborhood  

Magic Mirror, Magic Window: How a Feminist Bookstore in Brooklyn Both Reflects and Challenges its Gentrified Neighborhood  

The interior of Cafe Con Libros. Image from @cafeconlibros_bk

Cafe Con Libros is a charming one-room bookstore and coffee shop at the heart of North Crown Heights. Upon entering, readers will find a small space illuminated by natural light and filled with clean white shelves piled high with black, queer, feminist, and classic literature. Trendy cream-colored tote bags decorate exposed brick walls, and the air is rich with notes of nutty espresso and the sounds of coffeehouse chatter. 

The store feels modern, yet historic. Young, yet timeless. To circle the quaint place feels like an invitation to travel both forwards and backward in time, to touch and listen to literary objects as they speak their stories, to find the intersection between books penned by and for women of all different bodies, beliefs, and backgrounds, and to bridge a connection between the turbulent past and relentlessly hopeful present of the surrounding neighborhood.

After all, the unassuming turquoise storefront stands on the frontlines of an uphill battle to unify the gentrified borough of Brooklyn. From the bloody Crown Heights riots that erupted in the 90s to the families of color that are being bought out of their homes today, the shop faces a street with half a century’s worth of racial violence and gentrification bubbling beneath its surface. Yet this conflict never deterred its owner, Kalima DeSuze, from opening her shop. In fact, the neighborhood was why she decided to open Cafe Con Libros. 

Prospect Place, the street Cafe Con Libros calls home. Image taken by Chris Setter.

A North Crown Heights native, DeSuze grew up a six-minute walk from the front door of the building that would become her shop. She considers herself interlocked with the culture and history of the neighborhood, reminiscent of a North Crown Heights crowded with old community convenience stores and African hair-braiding spots (Rebecca). “I aim to bring the folks together who would normally not feel comfortable with one another,” she explains (Fernández). DeSuze works hard as an avid reader to disprove the misconception she heard from her Afro-Latina community when she announced her feminist bookstore: “Oh, that’s for white folk, that’s not for us” (Fernández). Her efforts to do so are not left unnoticed. The left-hand window boasts Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You? and Lovely War by Julie Berry, but also features The Crunk Feminist Collection and The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae. 

The collection quickly reveals DeSuze’s multifaceted desire to challenge her Afro-Latinx community’s views on feminism while mirroring their experiences and giving them a reason to feel a part of the store’s narrative. As her community grows and changes, she doesn’t want her store to be limiting or divisive. She wants it to be intersectional and unifying.

A floor plan of Cafe Con Libros, made by Ellie Pasquale using ThingLink.

Stepping inside, the light from the almost floor-to-ceiling windows brightens the hardwood and makes the white shelves glow. A small circular table sits to the immediate right of the door, highlighting books from local writers in a “customer-facing” design that BookRiot calls modern, eye-stopping, and customer-first (Manusos). Small shelves by the window display staff-picked books for another anchoring touch of community. A bundle of tote bags hang on a rustic rail beside it. 

The remainder of the right wall is an impressively large bookcase that displays Cafe Con Libros’ main collection. Tiny tags with elegant, cursive script denote the shelves with hyper-specific genres and age categories. From left to right, the inventory covers cookbooks, spirituality, and healing before moving into fiction like “LGBTQIA+ literature,” “Queer Romance,” “Asian Diaspora,” “Indigenous Writing,” “Young Adult,” “Latina Reads,” “Science Fiction and Fantasy,” “Graphic Novels,” and “Young Adult,” just to name a few. There are even non-book items like little embroidered signs and metal figurines that make the shelves feel more personal and homey, just as the writer Lydia Pyne describes in BookShelf (Pyne).


The right wall of Cafe Con Libros, featuring the store’s main collection. Image above taken by Susan De Vries. Image to the right is from Kelsey F. on Yelp.

As the academic Daphne Spain argues in her study of Feminist Bookstores, women visit feminist bookstores specifically “to see themselves in the books, and the ways books were displayed simplified their search. It was important to stock books by and about African American and Latina women, and equally important to make those collections visible” (Spain). According to Cafe Con Libros website, the shop aims to “offer feminist texts for all personalities, political affiliations, temperaments, and tastes.” Their selection means to “represent as many identities as possible.” The abundance of hyper-specific genres captures this intention. 

Of course, the black feminist classics are front and center. Kalima DeSuze’s favorite book, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, is always faced out to customers (Abi). Shelf tags like “Modern Black Feminism” and “Black Feminist Classics” have the largest collections, and establish the store as a landmark location for black feminist book-lovers.

The entire top shelf of the bookcase, miscellaneously marked “Feminist Novels,” continues off the right wall and onto the back wall as well, right above the coffee bar, which takes up the entire back right-hand corner of the store. 

Their tiny cafe has a rustic yet simultaneously hip and minimalist aesthetic. Mugs hang from the walls, dark umber wood coats the countertop, and a small iPad sits in the place of a traditional register. Coffee is cheap, their largest latte only costing $4, but being criminally delicious. A row of children’s books about civil rights and Black hair line the bottom of the cafe counter, serving as a reminder of a truth DeSuze is passionate about preaching: a coffee shop shouldn’t signal gentrification, because coffee doesn’t belong to the rich and the White. The shop’s name, which is a play on the Spanish phrase for “Cafe Con Leche” — meaning “Coffee With Milk” — translates instead to “Coffee with Books.” Coffee is the fruit of the global south, as she hammers in the interview below with On the Block. The very name of her shop helps her fight the gentrification of coffee and books, and so does the literary display in her miniature cafe.

Continuing through the store clockwise, customers travel from womanhood to girlhood. A sign reading “It’s a girl’s world” to the right of the bar marks the threshold of this new portion of the store: the children’s section, or the place Cafe Con Libros affectionately reserves for their “baby, budding feminists” (“Cafe Con Libros”). 

Two regulars of Cafe Con Libros. Image taken by @cafeconlibros_bk.

This expanse of wall carries colorful toys, puzzles, and stuffies, as well as an entire bookcase of picture and board books. The tags in this section vary from age categories like “Baby” to genre-specific ones like “LGBTQIA+” and “Civil Rights.” There’s a round table at the end of this wall, symmetrical to the other half of the shop, that features children’s books penned by local authors.  

These books for young readers trickle out into the window display. Picture books and toys take up the entire right-hand side of the display, welcoming all the young families local to the area. 

And just like that, before you even know it, Cafe Con Libros has circled you back out onto Prospect Street. The seating is permanently outdoors, all year round, feeding customers directly back into the community. On an average day, the storefront on Prospect Street has a sneakered dog walker resting on the bench by its window display, two friends chatting over lattes at the patio table, and a mother and child paging through a crisp new picture book under a striped umbrella. A visiting author may even sit at a small desk on the street corner, signing books for customers and starting conversations with couples walking down the street. 

Unlike objects in a museum that often require plaques for historical context and meaning, the objects of a bookstore speak for themselves. They carry their own narrative. But DeSuze shapes a narrative out of this collection of books, builds an inclusive chronotope, as the academic Clifford might say (Clifford). She doesn’t insist that all women are the same, and instead builds a library of all the ways they are different and makes reason to celebrate it — identifying them as various hyper specific categories, but also putting them all together onto the same bookcase in the same small store. She resists the sort of other-ing and separatism that first poisoned her neighborhood. 

DeSuze is ultimately a community builder. All women are invited to spend an afternoon in the cramped space of Cafe Con Libros, bumping elbows at book clubs while sipping their warm mugs of coffee, cracking open their new paperbacks. She designed Cafe Con Libros to not only be a mirror for her community, but also a window to see into the lives of others.

The turnout for Cafe Con Libros’ 2018 book club meeting for Lab Girl by Hope Jahren, when the store’s inventory was still building up. Image taken by Chris Setter.
Text Citation

Abi. “Cafe Con Libros, A Groundbreaking Book Store in Brooklyn.” YouTube, 19. May 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-_RHSS-ttg&t=145s

Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Harvard University Press, 2002. 

Fernandez, Stacey. “This Afro-Latina’s Feminist Bookstore Is Building Community in Gentrifying Crown Heights.” Remezcla, 10 Mar. 2018, remezcla.com/features/culture/this-afro-latinas-feminist-bookstore-is-building-community-in-gentrifying-crown-heights/.

Manusos, Lyndsie. “The Science and Recent History of Bookstore Design.” Book Riot, 22 Feb. 2022, bookriot.com/the-science-and-recent-history-of-bookstore-design/. 

“Menu: Cafe Con Libros.” Cafe Con Libros, www.cafeconlibrosbk.com/menu. Accessed 1 Nov. 2023.

Pyne, Lydia. Bookshelf. Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 

Rebecca. “Badass Women: Kalima Desuze, Founder of Feminist Bookstore, Cafe Con Libros.” Medium, Coconuts, 28 June 2018, medium.com/coconuts/badass-women-kalima-desuze-founder-of-feminist-bookstore-cafe-con-libros-c64e0f8ed358#:~:text=%E2%80%9CI%20have%20a%20deep%20affinity,wants%20to%20continually%20invest%20in.

Spain, Daphne. “Feminist Bookstores: Building Identity.” Constructive Feminism: Women’s Spaces and Women’s Rights in the American City, 1st ed., Cornell University Press, 2016, pp. 84–110. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctt18kr5mx.8. Accessed 7 Oct. 2023.

Image Citations

Cafe con Libros. @cafeconlibros_bk. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/cafeconlibros_bk/

F., Kelsey. Yelp. https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=nL8Ub9QbzrSqWY0LlJMxpA. Accessed 1 Nov. 2020

De Vries, Susan. “Cafe Con Libros Serves up Coffee and Community in Crown Heights.” Brownstoner, 19 Nov. 2021, www.brownstoner.com/brooklyn-life/crown-heights-bookstore-cafe-con-libros-724-prospect-place-feminist-bookclub-kalima-desuze/. 

“Portraits by Chris Setter.” NYC Photographer Chris Setter, www.chrissetter.com/. Accessed 18 Sept. 2023.

Video Citations

Aboveboard Media. “On the Block | Cafe Con Libros.” YouTube, 5 Mar. 2021, https://youtu.be/oGQtWRjdmLE. Accessed 7 Oct. 2023.

Resources

Library Express: Roots in the Community

Library Express: Roots in the Community

Since its beginning, Library Express Bookstore has embodied a “community first” business model for the downtown and greater Scranton areas. As part of the Lackawanna County Library System, its mission statement is “to enhance the lives of all individuals by offering free access to materials and programs designed to satisfy the informational and recreational needs of [the] community.” Thus, its function is twofold. It serves as a branch of the Scranton Public Library and as an indie bookstore, dedicated to meeting the literary, recreational, and scholarly needs of its customers.

According to Alyssa Loney, creator of Scranton Public Library’s podcast, Tales from the Albright, and one of the original employees at Library Express, the bookstore was originally called Library Light, which opened in September of 2011 in The Mall at Steamtown near the area Crunch Fitness occupies today. Just three months later, Library Light moved across the atrium to its current, permanent space, and was rechristened Library Express on January 11, 2012 for its official introduction as a branch of the Lackawanna County Library System. 

Though the store was always intended to be a hybrid space suited for both borrowing and purchasing books, the ties to the library were much more universal at the bookstore’s beginning. Library Express was originally devised as a space to provide library resources and materials for the people of downtown Scranton, and the bookstore half of the concept centered solely on providing a venue for the Friends of the Scranton Public Library to host their annual used book sale, which is widely popular and well attended by citizens in Scranton and the surrounding area. Library Express quickly expanded to stocking its own used titles, however, acquired by donations of gently used books made directly to the bookstore, and began incorporating a steadily growing collection of new books for sale.

Though it’s relatively common to find chain bookstores like BAM and Barnes and Noble in traditional shopping malls, an independent bookstore-library hybrid that emphasizes community and use of free lending materials is an incongruity that doesn’t seem to match the Mall at Steamtown’s capitalist, buyer-centric shopping culture. But that was exactly the point—according to Loney, at its conception, Library Express was intended to educate the public about the library system in a “new, unexpected environment.” Another of its primary goals was to encourage non-traditional library users to start using the library by promoting library card signups and community engagement. The Mall at Steamtown seemed the perfect place for such a bookstore due to its easy access to the community, including spheres of the community that had less interaction with the library system prior to the opening of Library Express.

Ironically, the Mall at Steamtown soon rose to meet Library Express in its emphasis on community. After an intense but losing battle fought by the mall’s original owner and developer, Albert Boscov, the mall was foreclosed on March 7, 2014. The decline in popularity of traditional mall culture and the closing of several key department stores was the final breaking point for the mall, and while Library Express continued its successful mission of community engagement as both a library and a bookstore in the mall after its foreclosure, the mall continued to decline, like many similar shopping centers across the county. About a year later, on July 28, 2015, the mall was sold to John Basalyga, who announced that although he had no intentions of redeveloping the mall, he hoped to move the property towards a more profitable future. This plan was realized on June 1, 2016, when the mall was renamed the Marketplace at Steamtown and rebranded as a community center in downtown Scranton. Soon after, the Luzerne County Community College opened a location on the first floor of the Marketplace, and the entire food court was converted into the Scranton Public Market, where local vendors sell their goods up to seven days a week. While the Mall at Steamtown was initially considered an ideal location for Lackawanna County’s hybrid bookstore due to its ease of access to the bookstore’s target audience, the Marketplace’s new emphasis on creating and fostering a community space aligned perfectly with Library Express’s goals, further contributing to the bookstore’s success. “We have a lot of people that stop by weekly,” says Diane Demko, the manager of Library Express, in her interview with Alyssa Loney. 

Over the years, Library Express has expanded its inventory to match the needs of its customers, first by moving away from only selling the books of the Friends of the Scranton Public Library towards selling their own collection of new and used books. Due to the bookstore’s position in the Marketplace at Steamtown, Library Express serves three kinds of customers: local community members, library patrons, and tourists who are looking for some fun while visiting the area or taking pictures with the “Welcome to Scranton” sign on the first floor of the mall, known for the sign’s iconic appearance in the hit TV series The Office. In 2019, Library Express expanded its inventory yet again, this time including a new merchandise section complete with bookish items, Dunder Mifflin/The Office souvenirs, greeting cards, and postcards of the Scranton area featuring the work of local artist Austin Burke.

Julia Grocki Book Signing

As part of its commitment to community outreach and role as a branch of the Lackawanna County Library System, Library Express hosts a plethora of events designed for all of the age brackets it caters to. From its opening in 2012 until the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Library Express participated in First Fridays, highlighting a different local artist, writer or speaker every month to boost community engagement and support local creatives. In July 2014, the bookstore began hosting Open Mic Nights for adults and teens (depending on the month), which they still do at present. In 2018, they introduced their Seasoned Citizen Movie Matinees, a monthly event that features throwback movies designed for the enjoyment and enrichment of community members ages 60 and up. They host numerous events for children, including Lego club, the Children’s Cozy Corner, and themed craft days for families. In 2021, they introduced the Young Writers Group, a workshop-based club dedicated to teaching teens the fundamentals of creative writing, and in March 2023, they launched their Sundays for Self-Care initiative, aimed at improving the well-being of library patrons and community members. 

When the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the library system on March 31, 2020, Library Express took it in stride, converting to online programming with ease. After reopening to in-person visits on June 24, 2020, the hybrid bookstore remained the only branch of the Scranton Public Library that stayed open throughout the continued Covid-19 closures, ensuring their customers’ safety by following social distancing guidelines, mask mandates, and quarantine procedures for returned materials. They also joined Bookshop.org in December 2020, so customers could deliver books straight to their home if they preferred while still supporting the Lackawanna County Library System. This option remains today, though the pandemic is over and Library Express’s in-person programming is back at full tilt.

Uniquely positioned in the Marketplace at Steamtown—a shopping mall turned community center—Library Express has served as a center of community in downtown Scranton, providing the resources community members need to excel in their intellectual/professional lives as well as their social/personal lives. In Reluctant Capitalists, Laura J. Miller asserts that chain bookstores “communicated their rejection of cultural elitism through their outlets’… placement in shopping centers and malls” and “indicated that they were not interested in ‘elevating’ or otherwise changing customer tastes through their selections,” while independent bookstores did just the opposite (60). Library Express occupies both ends of this contradictory position as it, though independent, also resides in a mall like the chains, an environment not typically conducive to the idea of a bookseller as a cultural guide who refines the tastes of their patrons, while on the other hand, Library Express also exists as a library which functions to stretch the intellectual capacities of its patrons, connecting them to the curated materials that will expand their understanding of the topic they are looking into. Miller also emphasizes how important it is for independent bookstores to get to know their community so they can better serve them (83), which is something Library Express has been doing since its conception, catering its programs, resources, collection, and inventory to the needs of its customers. Library Express was founded on the idea of reaching out to the community, and it continues this tradition to this day.

Citations

Texts

Amadeo, Salvatore. “Steamtown Mall in Scranton, PA: ExLog 63.” Salvatore Amadeo, 23 Feb. 2023, www.salvatoreamadeo.com/post/steamtown-mall-in-scranton-pa-exlog-63.

“Library Express Bookstore and Library: Support a Cause.” DiscoverNEPA, www.discovernepa.com/cause/library-express-bookstore-and-library/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

“Library Express Bookstore Is Now on Bookshop.” Lackawanna County Library System, 14 Dec. 2020, lclshome.org/2020/12/library-express-bookstore-is-now-on-bookshop/.

“Library Express Bookstore to Reopen Monday, June 29.” Lackawanna County Library System, 24 June 2020, lclshome.org/2020/06/library-express-bookstore-to-reopen-monday-june-29/.

“Library Express Bookstore Will Remain Open with Limited Occupancy.” Lackawanna County Library System, 11 Dec. 2020, lclshome.org/2020/12/library-express-bookstore-will-remain-open-with-limited-occupancy/.

“Library Express Bookstore.” Lackawanna County Library System, lclshome.org/b/library-express/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

Miller, Laura J. “Providing for the Sovereign Consumer: Selecting and Recommending Books.” Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2007, pp. 60–83.

“Scranton Public Library Locations Closed until Further Notice.” Lackawanna County Library System, 31 Mar. 2020, lclshome.org/2020/03/covid-19-statement-from-the-scranton-public-library/.

“Young Writers Group.” Lackawanna County Library System, 29 Dec. 2020, lclshome.org/2020/12/young-writers-group/.

Audio

“Tales from the Albright.” Created by Alyssa Loney, episode 4: Lackawanna County Children’s Library and Library Express Bookstore, 29 July 2021.

“Tales from the Albright.” Created by Alyssa Loney, episode 56: Library Express Bookstore, 23 Feb. 2023.

Images

juliabaker_rd. Julia Grocki Book Signing. 1 Dec. 2017. Scranton, PA.

Scranton Public Library. Check Out Our New Merchandise Section. 18 Mar. 2019. Scranton, PA.

Scranton Public Library. Library Card Sign-Up Month. 1 Sept. 2019. Scranton, PA.

Scranton Public Library. Library Express Bookstore Now Sells Greeting Cards! 28 Mar. 2019. Scranton, PA.

Scranton Public Library. New Pins!!! 7 Feb. 2019. Scranton, PA.

susan.t.smi. Visiting Independent Bookstores. 18 Oct. 2022. Scranton, PA.

theyellowbrickreader. Library Express Storefront. 11 Aug. 2021. Scranton, PA.

Timeline

Timeline created by Amelia Alexander using TimeGraphics: https://time.graphics/

Rich Intentions & a Love of Books: The History of Midtown Scholar Bookstore

When Midtown Scholar’s owners, Eric Papenfuse and Catherine Lawrence, met, they bonded over their shared love of books. Who would have known that over 20 years later, they would own one of the best indie bookstores in the country?

Papenfuse and Lawrence had already married each other when they decided to begin selling used books online in 1999. The official establishment of Midtown Scholar came two years later in 2001, when their niche was solidified in scholarly and academic books. However, the bookstore would not have a public, in-person location until 2003, when the doors of the old midtown post office were opened once again, this time with books lining the shelves. The Scholar was moved into the 1920s theater turned furniture store on the corner of 3rd Street and Verbeke Street in 2007 after extensive renovations on the building.

In April of 2023, Midtown Scholar held an interview with the owners about the origins of the store, and what it means to them. Something fascinating about the time Midtown Scholar came about as online bookselling is that it is the same period that Amazon began to show up as an online bookselling service. When asked about whether they found this worrying in the beginning, the co-owners pointed out that Amazon’s existence was an assist to them in ways. They were able to watch Amazon to keep their fingers on the pulse of what was popular, what was hard to get, and what was not selling as well. They make a point to find what is hard to find or what may not have large quantities published within the academic and scholarly world, so they have whatever people need. Their academic catalog is considered the largest between New York City and Chicago (Cheney).

One of the ways the store is stocked is through the closing of other indie bookstores. Papenfuse and Lawrence have traveled the country buying the stocks of shops that are closing to stock their shelves. They find rare titles, collector’s editions, and whatever else they can within these sales, and it keeps the memories of the original stores tied to them and the Scholar. Now, Midtown Scholar houses over 200,000 titles in store and over 2 million titles online, new and used from a variety of genres, so their consumers can find whatever they need. They began the Harrisburg Book Festival in 2012 to circulate stock, and it has become so much larger in the years since.

One of the things Catherine Lawrence made a point of in the interview was the intentionality they put into every piece of the Scholar. The name, Midtown Scholar Bookstore, was an intentional choice by the two when they established their first location. Even though their new store was on the outskirts of midtown Harrisburg, the Midtown Cinema was already in place, and they took inspiration. Papenfuse and Lawrence wanted people who heard the name to believe the store could be a part of the midtown for any city in the country. The Harrisburg community is extremely integral to the Scholar, Eric Papenfuse even having served as mayor of the city from 2014-2022, but those who know nothing about the store and its culture could make assumptions off the name and look it up later. This would open them up more to a nationwide audience, especially alongside their niche in the scholarly and academic book realm as well.

It is key to note the store’s location within midtown Harrisburg because Harrisburg is the capital of Pennsylvania. This means that prominent people, especially politicians, are visiting the city. Back in 2016, while Hilary Clinton was on her campaign tour, Bill Clinton made a point to visit the Scholar, staying for about an hour, browsing books, talking about books, and buying books. Its placement between more major cities like NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh also gives them a prime place for well-known authors to come and speak.

Because the Scholar will occasionally host more controversial figures in the hopes of allowing people exposure to ideas that may not be their own, there have been worries over the years of protests breaking out at their events. This has not been a concern brought to fruition, but it shows the points of both Archibald MacLeish in “A Free Man’s Books” and Jack Perry in his article, “Bookstores, Communist and Capitalist.” MacLeish points out the power of the written word displaying how it was one of the first things regulated and destroyed when power was being sought by the Nazi party. Perry shows this same notion with his exploration of how other nations have such difficulty getting their hands on books and when they do, those publications tend to be filled with propaganda. He wants people to realize the true worth of a good bookstore where ideas from any side can be shared and discussed because it is not that way worldwide. “I decided along the way that the importance, for me at least, of having a comfortable bookstore at hand with a wide and free choice of books could not be exaggerated… If we lose the individual, the eccentric, the out-of-the-way, from our world of books, we lose too much. All the first-rate writing and conscientious publishing in the world will not help us unless we have good bookstores to entice us to where the good books are,” (Perry p. 111).

One of the most well-known of the intentional pieces in the bookstore is the mural that wraps the inside walls of the main room of the building. Papenfuse and Lawrence commissioned the work from Steve Feaser, their neighbor and friend, for the outside of the original building. The old post office was an odd-looking place, and they wanted to make it beautiful and attract people. The mural is named “Life Along the River” and is a collection of the sketches Feaser did throughout his years in Harrisburg during his people watching expeditions along Front Street at the Susquehanna River. Papenfuse describes it as a “historical montage.” They explain that they were able to fit the mural inside the new building perfectly, to their surprise and joy, and they felt it would really emulate their goal of bringing the community together not just to buy books but to discuss them or to discuss anything they found worthy.

Midtown Scholar’s owners embedded into their store and its culture other ideals of MacLeish that he expressed in “A Free Man’s Books.” MacLeish said, “Books, in the last century and the century before, were sold by men who knew them not as packages but as books—men who had, and were entitled to have, opinions about the content and the value of the books they sold—men whose customers came to them, not to learn how many copies of a given novel had been sold before, but to talk about the novel itself—the innards of the novel—the quality of the book… True books are sold by the enthusiasm of those who know them and respect them. And that enthusiasm must express itself by word of mouth to count,” (MacLeish p. 13).

In the same April 2023 interview, the owners are asked about their feelings on chain bookstores, particularly those in the area at the time of their opening and at present. Something they made a point of in their answers was that they had no qualms with the chain stores because their goal at Midtown Scholar is different than that of the bigger bookstores. Eric Papenfuse says, “One of the things that we’ve tried to do is, actually, we do want to try to challenge you a little bit. We’re not just interested in giving you what you want so to speak, but we also want to suggest some books that maybe you don’t even know you want. And that’s part of the journey of discovery that takes place in the Scholar. Some people call us a labyrinth because we have so many floors and different spaces to go, and when I go to a bookstore I like the feeling of coming across a new book and saying, ‘I didn’t even know I wanted to read that,’ or ‘I didn’t know I needed that,’ and that is a different type of shopping than going to a chain.” His expression here is one that embodies the ideal MacLeish puts forth, saying that they at Midtown Scholar are enthusiastic booksellers, who want to help their customers discover new things and sit and stay awhile instead of walking in for one book and walking back out again when they find it.

Following its foundation, the Midtown Scholar Bookstore has become a beloved staple in the Harrisburg community. In May of 2023, it won the award for “Bookstore of the Year” from Publisher’s Weekly out of several bookstores nationwide. Its message and purpose, instilled in the culture of the store and the area from the beginning, has remained throughout the years.

Citations

Text

“About Us.” Midtown Scholar Bookstore-Cafe, www.midtownscholar.com/community. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

Cheney, Jim. “Visiting Midtown Scholar Bookstore: Harrisburg’s Best Destination for Literary Lovers.” Uncovering PA, 6 Sept. 2023, uncoveringpa.com/midtown-scholar-bookstore.

“Eric Papenfuse.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 27 Sept. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Papenfuse.

MacLeish, Archibald. A Free Man’s Books. The Peter Pauper Press, 1942.

Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Harrisburg Book Festival, www.hbgbookfest.com/. Accessed 9 Oct. 2023.

Midtown Scholar Bookstore. “Live | the Story of an Independent Bookstore with Catherine Lawrence and Eric Papenfuse.” YouTube, YouTube, 27 Apr. 2023, www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpdFCTpNQj4&ab_channel=MidtownScholarBookstore.

Perry, Jack. “Bookstores, Communist and Capitalist.” The American Scholar, 2001, pp. 107–111.

Schweigert, Keith. “Harrisburg’s Midtown Scholar Bookstore Named Publishers Weekly Bookstore of the Year.” Fox43.Com, 23 May 2023, www.fox43.com/article/news/local/dauphin-county/midtown-scholar-harrisburg-publishers-weekly-bookstore-of-the-year/521-d50a4ae9-b492-4523-9d70-2148bea5429d.

Images

Franz, Elizabeth. Harrisburg’s about to get even more colorful: Murals in the capital city. 1 Sept. 2017. Pennlive, https://www.pennlive.com/news/2017/09/harrisburg_murals_festival_spr.html. Accessed 10 Oct. 2023.

Hoffman, Michael. Midtown Scholar Bookstore. 16 June 2016. Flikr, https://www.flickr.com/photos/mhoffman1/9060576278. Accessed 10 Oct. 2023.

“Midtown Scholar Acquires Book Collection, New Store.” 9 April 2019. Shelf Awareness, https://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=3469#m44012. Accessed 10 Oct. 2023.

Timeline

Created by Olivia Neumyer using Time Graphics

Midtown Scholar: A History of Community Engagement

Midtown Scholar: A History of Community Engagement

Midtown Scholar resides in the heart of Midtown Harrisburg, which is an area of rich history and diversity. 

The Story of Midtown

Midtown Scholar Bookstore is in the Midtown neighborhood of Harrisburg, which is nestled between Downtown and Uptown. The neighborhood’s southern border is Forster Street, with Maclay Street to the north, 7th Street to the east, and the Susquehanna River to the west (“Districts”). Prior to the 1970’s, the area was marked by economic struggle and building vacancies. However, in 1977, the Midtown Square Action Council was created to improve the community’s interests, and they began popularizing the name Midtown. Between 1980 and 2000, the neighborhood began to improve economically, with the median income increasing from today’s $30,000 to $40,000. Additionally, the age of the population fell to over half of the residents being below the age of 35. The population also became more racially and ethnically diverse, with the majority of residents being Black or African American (Stabert). 

The exterior of Midtown Scholar Bookstore
Image taken from Publishers Weekly

Due to its close proximity to the state capital, many young professionals were drawn to this neighborhood. Over the years, new businesses drew people to Midtown with unique forms of entertainment and satisfying restaurant options. Oddly enough, many of these fan favorites dawn the name ‘Midtown’ into their titles. Aside from Midtown Scholar, Midtown Cinema opened around the same time to provide locals with both mainstream movies and lesser-known foreign films. There are also places like Midtown Tavern that adopted the name following the neighborhood’s newfound popularity. 

Today, the demographics of this area have remained relatively stagnant with a primarily Black or African American population of young people around the age of 30. These residents have a median income of about $44,444, which is not far from the numbers during their growth period from 1980 to 2000. 

The Birth of an Online Business 

Our story starts with two young intellectuals named Eric Papenfuse and Catherine Lawrence who met while in graduate school at Yale University. Their love story was built on a love for books, and they spent most weekends scouring bookstores for their next favorite read. However, upon their graduation from Yale, the couple relocated to the Harrisburg area. The year was 1999 and both Papenfuse and Lawrence had secured teaching positions in the area, with her working at Messiah College and him teaching Latin temporarily at Central Dauphin High School (Bedell and Landesberg). 

Once they found a house, the couple quickly realized they did not have much use for their collection of 100 to 150 university textbooks; and they certainly did not have the storage space for them. To solve this debacle, Papenfuse began selling his used books online at Amazon.com. Many of his books sold quickly, which convinced him there may be a market online for used books, especially academic ones. By January 2001, Papenfuse was selling books online from the comfort of his home in the Shipoke neighborhood (Bedell and Landesberg).

In terms of book selling, academic texts are generally always in high demand. This is because students have no control over what books are required for a course, that is entirely up to the professor’s discretion. Therefore, the sellers of these texts can mark university textbooks at alarmingly high prices because students will always need to buy them. This is where used academic book selling comes in handy because they are usually discounted compared to brand new copies, thus appealing to lower income college students. Papenfuse was able to profit from this need by curating a stock of used books that him and Lawrence acquired from local bookstores, library sales, and university presses. University presses proved to be very useful for the creation of their business because these types of publishers tend to print fewer copies than larger publishing houses. Therefore, by building strong relationships with these presses Papenfuse and Lawrence were able to have a steady flow of material to offer their customers (Bedell and Landesberg).

Becoming a Physical Place

As time passed and their business grew, Papenfuse and Lawrence realized their house in Shipoke could no longer withstand the steady influx of inventory. So, in 2002 they bought and began renovating the old Midtown Post Office building at 1519 N. Third Street, which became the first physical address for Midtown Scholar. Once they centralized their business in Midtown, the couple made it a point to cater their inventory to the community they were serving. Since the area was booming with diverse, young professionals, they stocked books dedicated to arts, photography, urban affairs, and African American studies (Bedell and Landesberg). This is a policy that Midtown Scholar has held onto since its inception. According to the store’s mission statement, they have “worked to transform our community by providing a welcoming space for the discussion and exchange of ideas about books, politics, arts and culture, and history (“About Us”). 

Midtown Scholar found itself in a constant cycle of growth that was marked by the ever-present need to purchase new spaces. Over the years, Papenfuse and Lawrence have bought and rented several storage units and buildings to house their constantly growing collection of products. Eventually, they were forced to close their original 3,000-square-foot building to expand down the street to a 10,000-square-foot space. On September 13, 2009, they reopened at 1302 N. Third Street. This new space allowed them to carry around 100,000 volumes, a café, a stage for author events and musical performances, and an art gallery (Bedell and Landesberg). 

Poster for 2023 Harrisburg Book Festival
Taken from Midtown Scholar Bookstore

Engaging the Community 

These new additions to Midtown Scholar allowed them to better serve their community by bringing interesting events to their doorstep. The store has hosted a slew of famous authors, like Frederick Backman and Erik Larson. However, arguably the largest way Midtown Scholar has continued to uplift its area is through the creation of the Harrisburg Book Festival, which Papenfuse and Lawrence launched in 2009. Although the project started small, it has grown into a book-themed spectacle that celebrates all things literature with a weeklong schedule of panels, author events, book signings, and children’s programs (Beeck). 

The success of Midtown Scholar as a community cornerstone can be marked by Papenfuse’s political career. He served as the mayor of Harrisburg from 2014 to 2022 and calls his bookstore “a place for civic engagement and a catalyst for urban development” (Beeck). 

Preserving the History

The city of Harrisburg and the Midtown neighborhood are both packed with examples of 19th and 20th century architecture, and Midtown Scholar is no different. In the current store, Papenfuse and Lawrence have made it a point to keep much of the original architecture from the former theatre and department store to honor the community’s history. For example, a portion of the original 1897 department store’s decal, the Boston Store, can be seen inside Midtown Scholar (Bassert). 

Taken from The Constant Rambler

Another example of Midtown Scholar’s historical preservations is the ornate bell that hangs from its ceiling, which is sometimes rung for special occasions. When Papenfuse was first elected, the sound of the bell tolling could be heard throughout Midtown (Bassert). 

The Motives of Midtown Scholar

Midtown Scholar’s dedication to fostering civic engagement and promoting free thinking made me immediately think of Archibald MacLeish’s assertions about books in “A Free Man’s Books”, particularly his claim that books are weapons. He specifically described books as “weapons of such edge and weight and power that those who would destroy the world of freedom must first destroy the books that freedom fights with” (MacLeish 6). Midtown Scholar’s mission statement, mentioned above, inadvertently acknowledges the fact that books generally have agendas, and these agendas can impact how a person thinks or acts. This is done by focusing on ideas surrounding politics and culture and promoting these ideas within their inventory by shelving titles that feature African American studies and political engagement. 

Image taken from TripAdvisor

However, as I ponder the agenda of Midtown Scholar, I cannot help noticing that these are white booksellers serving a predominantly Black community. Papenfuse and Lawrence realize their store is in a diverse area because they make it a point to stock up on books that focus on diversity. This then led me to considering Joshua Clark Davis’ claims in “Liberation Through Literacy.” During this piece, Davis explains that once Black and African American literature gained popularity in America, chain stores and white booksellers began selling these titles for cheaper prices than Black booksellers to make an easy profit (Davis 67). This forced many Black bookstores out of business, which made me consider Midtown Scholar’s dedication to Black literature. Are they just trying to give their community the content that best reflects their identities? Or are they attempting to make a profit off their diverse community? There’s no way to know the answer to this, but it does make me wonder if a Black-owned bookstore opened in Midtown, would it give Midtown Scholar a run for their money? 

Works Cited

“About Us.” Midtown Scholar Bookstore-Cafe, 2023, www.midtownscholar.com/history-and-mission. 

Bassart, Lauren. “Why Everyone Should Visit Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, PA.” The Constant Rambler., 30 July 2014, www.theconstantrambler.com/midtown-scholar-bookstore-harrisburg-pa/. 

Bedell, Doug, and Phil Landesberg. “Midtown Scholar Bookstore Owners Cover Business on Internet, in Shop.” ProQuest, Central Penn Business Journal, 6 Apr. 2007, libgateway.susqu.edu/login?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Ftrade-journals%2Fmidtown-scholar-bookstore-owners-cover-business%2Fdocview%2F236300397%2Fse-2%3Faccountid. 

Beeck, Nathalie op de. “U.S. Book Show 2023: Midtown Scholar.” PublishersWeekly.Com, Publishers Weekly, 12 May 2023, www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bea/article/92294-u-s-book-show-2023-midtown-scholar.html#:~:text=They%20entered%20the%20bricks%2Dand,bookstores%20in%20Cambridge%20or%20Georgetown%2C. 

Davis, John Clark. “Liberation Through Literacy .” From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs , p. 67. 

“Districts.” Explore HBG, www.explorehbg.com/neighborhoods/#:~:text=Midtown%20Harrisburg%20is%20delineated%20by,Susquehanna%20River%20to%20the%20west. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023. 

MacLeish , Archibald. A Free Man’s Book

Stabert, Lee. “Rebirth in Midtown Harrisburg.” Keystone Edge – What’s Next & Best in Pennsylvania – Growth, Innovation, and Community News, 17 May 2016, www.keystoneedge.com/2016/05/17/rebirth-in-midtown-harrisburg/. 

Veronikis, Eric. “Midtown Scholar Set to Reopen in Bigger Space.” ProQuest, Central Penn Business Journal , 21 Aug. 2009, libgateway.susqu.edu/login?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.proquest.com%2Ftrade-journals%2Fmidtown-scholar-set-reopen-bigger-space%2Fdocview%2F236378901%2Fse-2%3Faccountid. 

Harriett’s Bookshop – History, Activism, and Literature

Harriett’s Bookshop – Home to History, Activism, and Literature

Harriett’s Bookshop – Home to History, Activism, and Literature

While walking down the historic streets of the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia, you may notice the age of the town behind new paints and plaster, the indents where bullets still live within the ancient brick townhouses. Abandoned pickets lay scattered within Fishtown’s alleyways, they almost seem like cracks in an otherwise quaint and beautiful little neighborhood. A sudden gust of wind tinged with salt and scales has you looking down at a sidewalk that has led countless people to where they wanted to be, and now you happen to find yourself looking down at concrete steps leading into a bookshop. The black awning shields you from the sun but blankets you in warm shade, you open the door and hear “welcome to Harriett’s,” as the salt, scales, and alleyway unease are replaced by the light smell of frankincense and book paper. You feel comfortable, relaxed, like you’ve found yourself in some sort of paradise.

“The bookstore feels like a gallery, where the books, mostly iconic and newer titles by Black women-identifying authors—Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, bell hooks—are the art.”

Lauren McCutcheon (The Philadelphia Citizen)
Harriett’s Bookshop from the inside out (Fishtown District, 2023).

That’s exactly the kind of feeling Jeannine Cook, the owner of Harriett’s Bookshop, wants her customers to feel. Harriett’s, named after Harriet Tubman, strives to be a place for minorities to come to and feel at home, feel comfortable, feel safe. Cook has always been a big community-oriented person and takes great pleasure in teaching. After graduating from the University of the Arts in 2004, she began teaching creative writing twice a week at the John Street Community Center. On other days, she would stand at the corner of Broad Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue selling books and incense. Cook would go on to teach creative writing at Point Breeze Performing Arts Center, District 1199C, and Youth Build. She’d teach at Yes Philly with teens who’ve dropped out and got caught up in the justice system and through American Friends Service Committee, she worked with youths from 10 different countries developing a racism, colonialism, and imperialism centered course curriculum. Even after opening Harriett’s, Cook says “Every time I think I’ve left the classroom. I end up right back in the classroom (CBS Philadelphia, 2020).” She does this through her activism, through giving back to the community, for speaking out when no one else is strong enough to. She does things with the intention of making an impact.

Cook has faced many trials and tribulations opening her bookshop and continues to face challenges. The first lease she ever signed for Harriett’s rented her a vacant store space that would end up burning down within that same year. This didn’t deter her, of course, as she signed the current lease in 2019 and had her grand opening on February 1st, 2020. Ah yes, the dreaded 2020. Merely six weeks after opening, all business were forced to shut down when a quarantine was mandated in March of 2020 due to the rapid spread of Covid-19. While many businesses had gone out of business, Harriett’s was still hanging on. Cook took the bookshop online, sold physical copies from a pop-up sidewalk bookshop, and collaborated with Dr. Gina South, an ER doctor at Pennsylvania Hospital, to create “Essentials for Essentials.” Although Cook was surviving through the pandemic, the natives of Fishtown didn’t make it any easier for her.

August 28, 1964, Twenty-Second and Columbia Avenue. The Columbia Avenue Race Riot (Elkins, 2022).

Fishtown today is considered one of the hippest neighborhoods in Philly; its historical scars hidden away behind its new persona, but that’s just the thing with scars, cracks, and history, they run deep. We see that in how much Cook has had to fight to open and sustain her business as a female black business owner. Although Fishtown has a more creative population than they once had, it is still one of the most nondiverse parts of Philadelphia having a predominantly white population. In a video titled “Stories in Place” on Harriett’s Bookshop’s website, Jeannine said, “When I first came to Philly, what people said a lot was that Fishtown has a really sorted past and a really sorted present (Momar 5:08).” The unbalanced nature of Fishtown is often pointed out to Cook in the form of violent and racist emails, protests of white men wielding baseball bats, and white people mimicking Floyd’s murder in the streets. This was especially prominent after George Floyd’s lynching, in May 2020, which sparked Black Lives Matter protests from all over the country. This isn’t new for Fishtown either; historically Philadelphia was known to harbor many violent race riots, one of the more famous being the Columbia Avenue Riot of 1964.

Stories in Place: Harriett’s Bookshop from Raishad Momar titled “Sisters of the Soil” (Momar, 2023).

Being a primarily white town isn’t what’s causing inequality in Fishtown, but the fact that so many of these white people are older and set in their ways. Cook recalls an event not long after the white ‘pro cops’ protest with baseball bats, when she was walking down the street and came upon white protestors silently kneeling for nine minutes, mimicking the same amount of time Derek Chauvin kneeled on George Floyd’s neck, protesting in favor of the police. Just as the ‘pro cops’ protest was just around the corner from Harriett’s, so too was this. Like any sane person, Cook found this display jarring as she watched countless strangers reenact Floyd’s lynching.

“This is the thing that happens in this country over and over again, where things lose their essence, lose their direction. In that very moment, silence is violence.”

Jeannine Cook (McCutcheon, 2022)

When Cook and several other black business owners received racist and violent emails, threatening to burn, rape workers and mothers, and remind them that BIPOC lives are in constant danger, Cook organized her own protest, a Sisterhood Sit-In. With the support of her customers and social media presence, on March 12, 2022, her and hundreds of others walked from Fabrika to Harriett’s in an umbrella procession. The umbrellas obscured the faces of protestors, making it difficult to guess ages, so-called races, and so-called sexual orientations. Cook only had three days to organize the protest, but in the end, it went exactly as she was hoping.

Group Photo in front of Harriett’s Bookshop, looking forward to another Sisterhood Sit-In Tour (Cook, 2023).

Cook’s social media presence grabbed the attention of more people than she was expecting, jumping from only 3k to 30k followers in only a couple weeks. People admire what she stands for, that she was risking her life and safety to pass out books like Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow: An Organizing Guide by Daniel Hunter and Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by Adrienne Maree Brown. Cook was nearly shot herself by a police sniper in Kentucky but continued from Minneapolis to City Hall in Philly and back in front of her shop. Cook’s dedication to standing up against inequality, racism, sexism, and more, garnered her support from some well-known faces. On November 9, 2021, only a couple weeks after Harriett’s post-quarantine reopening party, Harriett’s hosted the launch party for Will Smith’s new memoir Will. Harriett’s also grabbed the attention of some of Cook’s literary heroes; with Nikole Hannah-Jones visiting Harriett’s in-store art display paying tribute to her book The 1619 Project, and Alice Walker attending a hybrid event hosted by Harriett’s celebrating the 40th anniversary of The Color Purple.

Harriett’s Bookshop would be what it is if not for how Cook is. From all the books being written by black female authors to the charming events, Harriett’s brings people together. An article from the Philadelphia Citizen, they quote Cook saying, “People start calling the store more than a store, saying it’s a sanctuary, a hangout, a safe space, an art gallery, a monument (McCutcheon, 2022).” This is exactly it. Harriett’s is a sanctuary and safe space for minorities within an oppressive neighborhood, that have no other place they can go where they feel safe. It is a monument dedicated to the fight for equality, showcasing what an equal world could look like. Harriett’s is a symbol of hope and of home, many can agree. It is a place of learning, filled with books that make you feel seen and topics which make you feel there’s hope or that good change is possible. Harriett’s sparks peaceful protest for what is right, it’s what makes the bookshop feel like a home rather than a place of business. “The purpose behind her store was “not a matter of sales. It’s not a questioning of bookselling… It’s the raising of consciousness (Davis, p 37).”

Timeline of Harriett’s Bookshop in green above and important national events in brown below (McCann, 2023).

Sources

Media

Cook, Jeannine. “Harrietts_bookshop .” Instagram, 2019, www.instagram.com/harrietts_bookshop/.

Elkins, Alex. “Columbia Avenue Riot.” Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, 15 Mar. 2022, philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/columbia-avenue-riot/.

Fishtown District. “Harriett’s Bookshop.” Fishtown District, 2023, fishtowndistrict.com/business/harrietts-bookshop/.

Momar, Raishad. “Stories in Place: Harriett’s Bookshop.” Vimeo, 8 Oct. 2023, vimeo.com/507621976.

Websites

CBS Philadelphia. “Harriett’s Bookshop in Fishtown Thriving during Pandemic Due to Unique Mission.” CBS News, CBS Interactive, 25 Aug. 2020, www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/harrietts-bookshop-in-fishtown-thriving-during-pandemic-due-to-unique-mission/.

Goulet, Emily. “Fishtown: An Oral History (so Far).” Philadelphia Magazine, 25 Nov. 2019, www.phillymag.com/news/fishtown-oral-history-philadelphia/.

Harriett’s. “Harriett’s.” Our Sister Bookshops, 2023, www.oursisterbookshops.com/harrietts.

Harriett’s Bookshop Online. “Harriett’s Bookshop Bookshop.” Bookshop, 2023, bookshop.org/shop/harriettsbookshop.

McCutcheon, Lauren. “How Black Bibliophile Jeannine Cook Became the Voice of Philadelphia.” The Philadelphia Citizen, 14 Nov. 2022, thephiladelphiacitizen.org/jeannine-cook-philly/.

McShane, Julianne. “Why a Bookstore Owner Is Working to Make Harriet Tubman Day a Reality.” NBCNews.Com, NBCUniversal News Group, 29 Apr. 2022, www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/bookstore-owner-working-make-harriet-tubman-day-reality-rcna26333.

Rebolini, Arianna. “For Harriett’s Bookshop Owner Jeannine Cook, at the Root of Everything …” Oprah Daily, 28 Feb. 2022, www.oprahdaily.com/entertainment/books/a39186848/jeannine-cook-harrietts-bookshop/.

Wilson, Jennifer. “Q&A: Cook’s Activism at Philly Bookshop.” Poets & Writers, 11 Feb. 2022, www.pw.org/content/qa_cooks_activism_at_philly_bookshop.

Text

“Liberation Through Literacy.” From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs, by Joshua Clark Davis, Columbia University Press, 2020, pp. 35–82.

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

Timeline

McCann, Bedelya. “Harriett’s Bookshop Timeline.” Harriett’s Bookshop Timeline – Timeline, 2023, time.graphics/line/841980.

Past: People and Place

History of Library Express and its Community

When you are taking a stroll in the Marketplace at Steamtown, you will come across a store that has wooden panels bordering it with big windows that have a display that tends to match the season. Along the wooden panel that is across the entrance, it reads: “Library Express.”

Library Express is no ordinary bookstore, it is also one of the libraries that is part of the Lackawanna County Library System. While you are at Library Express you are able to purchase a book like you would at a regular bookstore, but you are also able to borrow books as well just like you would do at a library. When you think of a bookstore, you rarely think of there being bookstores that are also a branch of a public library. That is what makes the Library Express Bookstore so unique.

A Brief History of the Lackawanna County Library Systems

The Lackawanna County Library System was founded in 1960 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. It has eleven member libraries that make up its system. These libraries are Lackawanna County Children’s Library, Albright Memorial Library, Valley Community Library, Nancy Kay Holmes Branch Library, Dalton Community Library, Abington Community Library, Taylor Community Library, Carbondale Public Library, Lackawanna County Bookmobile, North Pocono Public Library, and Library Express.

History of the Library Express Bookstore

Library Express was established in 2012 as a branch of the public library system in Scranton. More specifically, the bookstore’s Twitter page had announced on its first post on January 11, 2012, that Library Express was the newest branch of the Lackawanna County Library system and that it was also a bookstore.

Tweet made by Library Express Bookstore to announce the start of their bookstore

Throughout the last decade, Library Express has only progressed. Almost right away, Library Express had started holding different events. Authors, including local ones, would come into the bookstore and do readings and signings.

Their first local author to come in was Nancy McDonald who did a reading and signing of her book, If You Can Play Scranton, on January 28, 2012. Not only was McDonald a local to Scranton, but her book also had to do with Scranton’s history from 1871 to 2010. McDonald was not the only author who read a book of theirs that talked about Scranton’s history. Other books that were featured during author events were history about the local area or even memoirs.

Since 2017, Library Express has been doing monthly Open Mic Nights that have only gotten bigger since its very first event. Eventually, they started doing movie nights and hosting multiple different types of clubs, including book clubs. It is a place where people are meant to feel comfortable and feel like they are part of the community.

Some American bookstores are believed to be only about making money and not about the community. In Jack Perry’s Bookstores, Communist and Capitalist, he says, “No one in these places seems to love books, or even to like them, except as money makers” (Perry 109). Library Express is not this way though. They have a love for books and a love for their community. They want to help bring the community together by having so many events. Since Library Express is part of a public library it donates money to the library system. Also libraries are meant to help people learn more by loaning out books rather than just selling them.

Library Express decided to extend its target customers of people who shopped at the physical bookstore to online customers as well. Instead of just having people in the community come to the bookstore for the books that they want or need, they were finally able to purchase them online. On December 8, 2020, Library Express made it accessible for their customers to buy books through bookshop.org, which is a website that allows readers to connect with independent booksellers all over the world. This website helps small independent bookstores by financially supporting them. Bookshop.org is a good fit for Library Express considering they advertise themselves as wanting to help their community.

The reasoning for their progression towards being part of an online store as well as just a regular store people can go into is because of the COVID-19 pandemic that has changed the lives of so many people in Scranton and everyone else in the world as well. Like other public libraries in Pennsylvania, on March 16, 2020, Library Express had to close due to the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily.

Tweet made by Library Express about temporarily closing of bookstore

Even though in the tweet, they had said that public libraries in Pennsylvania would be closed from March 14, 2020, until March 29, 2020, it did not remain true. Especially for Library Express, they were unable to reopen for several months. While they were closed they also were not taking any donations so they could not help the community or the public library systems during this time.

Library Express’s first online event. Photo provided by Library Express Twitter page.

It was on July 27, 2020, when Library Express had announced that they were officially opened once again. However, even with it being reopened they still were not accepting donations and they could not do any in-person events due to Covid. It was not until September 4, 2020, that they held their first event since they had reopened, but they did it online.

Even with things starting to go back to a new type of normal, COVID-19 still had an effect on the bookstore. Months after it had reopened they had to reclose it for a couple of days since a member of their staff had come in close contact with someone who had COVID. During the two days that they were closed, they did deep cleaning to make sure that when they re-open once again their customers as well as Library Express employees would be less likely to get sick with COVID.

Being part of a community has more than just where you live. It is also about the group of people who surround you and how you interact. When you are part of a community you can be expected to participate and help out. That is what is nice about independent bookstores. They care about their customers enough to make an effort to get to know them and try to help them with what they need. In Tim Cresswell’s book, Place, he defines what a place is in the very first chapter. Cresswell mentioned how “places must have some relationship to humans and the human capacity to produce and consume meaning” (Cresswell 7). Library Express is this type of place. They are a bookstore where customers are able to come in and buy the book of their choice, but they are also a library that will loan you a book that you have been looking for or need. Libraries are a place that helps the people in the community learn more about their community or anything else they possibly might want to learn. Library Express has the best of both worlds by being a library and a bookstore.

Sources:

History/Information

Cresswell, Tim. Place: A Short Introduction. Blackwell, 2011.

“Library Express Bookstore.” X, X, twitter.com/libraryexpress. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.
Perry, Jack. “Bookstores, Communist and Capitalist.” Bibliophilia, 2001, pp. 107–111.

Image cited

“Library Express Bookstore.” X, X, twitter.com/libraryexpress. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

Timeline

Free Online Timeline Maker, time.graphics/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

Midtown Scholar: A History of Celebrating History

Midtown Scholar: A History of Celebrating History

Image from Uncovering PA

In 1719, John Harris, an English trader, settled in a place along the beautiful Susquehanna River. This place would later be known as Harrisburg, and become the capital of the state of Pennsylvania, beating out the historical giants of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.  282 years later in 2001, the 38th mayor of Harrisburg, Eric Papenfuse, and his wife Catherine Lawrence opened Midtown Scholar. Midtown Scholar is a bookstore located on North Third Street in Harrisburg and carries hundreds of thousands of books in the store and millions more online.  

Founders Eric and Catherine met at Yale University during an American History class (Vegoe). They moved to Harrisburg in 1999, settling along the Susquehanna River, just as John Harris did almost three hundred years prior. They moved into a Victorian townhouse built in 1873 (Vegoe). If the couple meeting in a history course at Yale doesn’t show how much they love history, their historical home that they bought just out of college definitely demonstrates that fact.  

Midtown Scholar started because Catherine and Eric wanted to sell their old history books from their time at Yale. They would sell them online, which later translated into them opening a brick-and-mortar store in Harrisburg in 2003. Catherine described to Publishers Weekly the building they purchased as “a languishing old building.” The property is a mismatched blend of an old post office and a townhouse. They would later add onto their building during the 2007 real estate crisis. They bought the theater and furniture store next door and connected the buildings underground through a tunnel-like structure. It is easy to get lost in there, as the sprawling legs go underground, and you can also go up in the mezzanine. The café makes it easy to sit down with a book and a coffee and stay for hours. The store, if you are a book lover, especially a history fan, can turn into an all-day event, even if you were just planning on having a look around.  

The couple stuck to their roots in selling academic books, and that is their main point of sale to this day. Midtown Scholar sells specifically historical books. Catherine and Eric did an interview with C-Span showing the bookstore and what they had to offer to customers and booklovers alike. The former mayor of Harrisburg shows off their rare book room, which is a sight to see. Antique photographs and paintings are hung on the wall, vintage bookcases, and of course, rare books. Some of the books are so old and rare that they look like you could brush them with your fingers, and they would disintegrate. Eric also boasts rare prints that are for sale.  

Image from RobinPrints

In the interview with C-Span, Eric talks specifically about the books that were published locally in Harrisburg. He shows the interviewer what is believed to be the first book published in Harrisburg back when the city had just been renamed from Lewisburg. The book, titled, “Death: A Vision; or, the Solemn Departure of Saints and Sinners Represented Under the Similitude of A Dream,” is about a survivor’s account of a brutal slave rebellion. Papenfuse also shows the interviewer another book from 1816 where on the front of the title page, Pennsylvania’s capital is still called “Hahrrisburg.” They were still working out the name. This shows just how old their books are.  

While speaking to the interviewer and camera, you can tell just how passionate Papenfuse is about the books that he carries. Not just about the physical book itself, but the content and history behind the book. His eyes light up when talking about the rich history of the city he serves as mayor of, and you can tell he genuinely cares. In A Free Man’s Books, Archibald MacLeish talks about the trade between a bookseller and a customer. He describes that when the purchase is impersonal, the bookseller just sells the customer a book without giving any commentary or review, then the art of bookselling dies. Papenfuse’s love for historical books shows that he is a tried-and-true bookseller by definition of MacLeish.  

Diving deep into the history of Harrisburg, a huge part of their history is their involvement in the Civil War. Pennsylvania was the southernmost state on the East Coast that was firmly a Union state. Harrisburg is not that far from the border of Maryland and West Virginia. The state capital was integral to the Underground Railroad as well as the war effort in supporting the Union army. Right across the street from Midtown Scholar is the historic Broadstreet Market. The market was opened in 1860. Just a few short years later, the market helped feed the 300,000 soldiers stationed at Camp Curtain (Market). Since then, Broadstreet Market has had a long and rich history of providing fresh food and ingredients to the people of Harrisburg.  

Down the street from Midtown Scholar on North Third Street, is the State Museum of Pennsylvania. The museum originally opened in 1905 next to the state capital. However, in 1964 it was moved to the location it currently is in down from the Midtown Scholar. A museum representative told Andrea Lowery at Pennsylvania Heritage that they are “extremely anxious to have a thoroughly modern museum.” However, the museum celebrates the history of the state of Pennsylvania and all of its accomplishments. On the website for the State Museum of Pennsylvania, they have all of their exhibits, both permanent and temporary, up for everyone to see. When you first walk in, you are greeted with a statue of the founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn. There are also exhibits of transportation, animals, icons of Pennsylvania, and one of the biggest, the Civil War exhibit. Some temporary exhibits that are on display now include the women of Pennsylvania as well as African-American veterans. The history of Pennsylvania is clearly and proudly displayed at the State Museum of Pennsylvania.  

Statue of William Penn, image from the State Museum of Pennsylvania

With a neighborhood that includes the Broadstreet Market and the State Museum of Pennsylvania, it would be hard for the Midtown Scholar to not have such an array of historical books, specifically those published in Harrisburg and about Harrisburg. The neighborhood individually celebrates their personal history, which includes the history of the city and the state. But when you have a place like the Midtown Scholar that is the culmination and celebration point of, it allows the neighborhood to flourish in its rich history.  

In A Free Man’s Books, author Archibald MacLeish discusses the job of bookselling. He says, “the real job is a job which has to do with people – actual people, and books, — specific books. You know your people better than we could ever know them. You know your books and their relation to your people. You and you alone can bring the two together.” Books bring people together. They allow people to discuss matters they would never even think of before reading. Eric Papenfuse and Catherine Lawrence are no strangers to this fact or to Harrisburg. They planted their roots in the city and have grown exponentially since then. They know the people of Harrisburg want a place to sit, read a book, have a coffee, and maybe converse with their friends about the newest bestselling novel. Midtown is just the place for that and will be that place for time to come.  

Work Cited

“2023 Festival Books.” Midtown Scholar Bookstore-Cafe, www.midtownscholar.com/harrisburg-book-festival. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.  

“About the Market.” Broad Street Market, broadstreetmarket.org/about/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.  

Atlantic Communications StudiosFollow this. “Harrisburg Regional News Winter, 2014.” Issuu, 2 Dec. 2016, issuu.com/atlanticcommunicationsgroup/docs/hrn2014winter.  

“Changing Exhibits.” The State Museum of Pennsylvania, 25 Sept. 2023, statemuseumpa.org/changing-exhibits/.  

Lowery, Andrea. “A Home for History: S.K. Stevens and the Campaign for the William Penn Memorial Museum and Archives.” Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine, 20 May 2020, paheritage.wpengine.com/article/home-history-sk-stevens-campaign-william-penn-memorial-museum-archives/.  

MacLeish, Archibald. A Free Man’s Books. Peter Pauper Press. 

“Midtown Scholar Bookstore.” C, www.c-span.org/video/?422299-1%2Fmidtown-scholar-bookstore. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.  

“U.S. Book Show 2023: Midtown Scholar.” PublishersWeekly.Com, 12 May 2023, www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bea/article/92294-u-s-book-show-2023-midtown-scholar.html#:~:text=They%20entered%20the%20bricks%2Dand,bookstores%20in%20Cambridge%20or%20Georgetown%2C%E2%80%9D

Library Express – Searching for stability as the Electric City flickers

Library Express – Searching for stability as the Electric City flickers

“Bookstores come and bookstores go, but perhaps the library is forever.”

It’s an eye-catching quote, isn’t it? For that reason, I don’t feel too bad for making it up. It’s not exactly what Carrión said when discussing the two, but it might as well have been. In chapter 2 of “Bookshops: A Reader’s History”, Carrión characterizes the libraries as endpoint collections for literature, propped up and sanctioned by their connections to authority (Carrión, p. 41). Bookstores, on the other hand, are much more mercurial and nebulous: they exist to sell their wares for a short time, and then disappear into the annals of history, forgotten as institutions, while historians wax over the lost and found libraries of old in their modern libraries. One might even infer some sort of libertarian ideology here – the idea that the library and all its authority stands in opposition to the poor little bookstore, overshadowing it and sucking wares from it until the latter dries up.  If that’s what is said about the two individually, one must then naturally wonder what could be said about Scranton’s Library Express as the child and thus inheritor of the two conflicting approaches to text acquisition.

Though it might be one of the lone bookstores in Scranton, the Library Express does not stand alone. The Library Express is a part of the larger Lackawanna County Library System, and thus shares its history in that. The Library’s proprietor has its public-facing offices about four blocks away, down at the Scranton Children’s Library and its private offices down at the Silkman House. Both are housed in historical buildings, purchased and subsequently refurbished by the Scranton Public Library board: the latter was home to the Christian Science Church and the other one of the oldest buildings in Scranton.

Silkman House, circa 1936, image taken by the National Park Service. At this time, the building was still inhabited by a member of the Silkman family, and would not open as a library for two more years.

However, while the history of these two buildings and how they came to be acquired as government property from private enterprises is interesting, their previous proprietors are certainly not as indicative of Scranton’s history as the Albright Library’s is.

Postcard, circa 1930 and 1945

The Albright Library is the keystone library of the Electric City and its historical first, located just next to the Children’s Library, meaning only four blocks down from the Steamtown Mall. The Albright building, as one could gather from the name, was originally the home of the Albrights, a multigenerational family of coal, iron/steel, railroad and bank magnates throughout the late 1800’s. While the age might have been known as the “Gilded Age”, the splendor was quickly chipped away to reveal the rusty, sooty history underneath the surface: soon after the Albright family donated the library, they moved their industry out of the city, leaving many of the workers unemployed. Though in the eyes of the capitalists it might have just been a move of economic passion (westward was, quite literally, gold, and oil, too!), this betrayal must have been viewed as an act of retribution by the workers: in the years just prior to the Albright’s leaving, the Scranton coal workers went on the biggest coal strike that Luzerne and Lackawanna counties had ever seen. Terence V. Powderley, former mayor of the Electric City, was soon ejected from the largest union in America, the equally famous and infamous Knights of Labor. Without any leadership from unionist or industrialist, their city was left to decompose, the only memory of capitalist goodwill being the library, and nothing else left to fill the hole that the mining industry left but resentment.

It was in these years of the growing Rust Belt, as the businesses that abandoned Scranton soon came to abandon American workers entirely, that the library gradually expanded itself throughout the city, buying old landmarks that once belonged to the richest families of Scranton, and refurbishing them into wings of its organization.

As I discussed in my last post, that economic rut and rot that characterizes the Rust Belt has still not alleviated in Scranton, despite the good intentions of many such businessmen to add a new color of paint. The mall itself in which the Marketplace @ Steamtown is held started out that way – an economic venture to hopefully garner community spirit and a new jolt of life for the Electric City’s circuit – as did the Museum out back.

Has it been working? Well, it doesn’t seem like it, though there’s no real data to quantify if it has or hasn’t been.

I tried to find data on the stores that opened and closed in Scranton, but unfortunately such information is not gathered and treated like the government census and instead falls into the opportune laps of market research firms. Any information that would have been compiled is then locked behind pretty steep paywalls and services that would take a whole new academic program for me to become acquainted with. In some ways, it’s almost a mini library versus bookstore dichotomy.

What I was able to find, in plentiful amount, was complaints about the dying city and its similarly struggling economy. Most humorous to me were pictures from just one year ago, from the subreddit “Dead Malls”, dedicated to the cataloguing of the dead mall late-stage-capitalist phenomenon.

The Marketplace At Steamtown, Scranton, PA.
byu/VisualDimension292 indeadmalls

More interesting, though, was an old forum on “city-data.com” in 2008, where users discussed recent business closures in the city. However, like many classic forums do, it eventually derailed into political arguments about the intentions of mayors, with business owners even chiming into remind readers that the rumors of their stores’ deaths were greatly exaggerated: much like Rust Belt industries, the petit bourgeoisie had simply moved shop elsewhere.

Most interesting of all to me was the information that a Barnes & Nobles had, in fact, once called the Marketplace @ Steamtown home, much like Library Express does now. Interestingly, this means that some of these forum user’s prayers were answered in a roundabout way. While Anthology books mysteriously closed without a trace back in 2011, a bookstore did return to the mall a year later: the Library Express.

However, as the forum users explain, niche markets are an issue for businesses in Scranton. Books are apparently niche enough to drive two dedicated bookstores away from the city’s disinterested customers less than five years before the Library Express opened.

So, why did the Library Express open up in a dying Rust Belt city where the last bookstore so quickly closed up shop before it and the people are so virulently opposed to small businesses out of economic necessity? Clearly, the Library did not do so out of profit: if that was the case, a dead mall with minimal foot traffic is a terrible move, especially when the Library can and already has bought and refurbishing real-estate instead of renting it before. It was not done for accessibility, or for passion, or for learning, as all of these are redundant when the Lackawanna County Library System already has so many nodes spread out throughout the city.

It must be out of ideology, then, akin to Una Mulzac’s Liberation Bookstore and other bookstores like it (Davis 38). Unlike those bookstores, though, the Library Express is not just a place of learning or programming. While it certainly is and does function as that, it is redundant with the library in this way. Its place in promoting the small-business open-night “First Friday” trend across the state is quite telling. Library Express exists to fulfill an economical niche within the community’s ecosystem: it is the quintessential library bookstore that must exist to ensure a well-read populace, as Archibald MacLeish might say.

It might not be in Scranton’s interest to remain capitalist, nor might it be in the library’s best interest to run a bookstore in the mall. Small businesses dry up as the citizens routinely prefer the convenience and assortments of larger stores. However, when large corporations have such a history of mistreating and abandoning you as they do in Scranton, perhaps it is only right that your city government steps in to shoulder the economic burden, just as the Library Express is doing now in Scranton. While the laborers who worked and striked for the good of the people of Scranton years ago have passed, their electric spirit will live on.

Works Cited

Class Content

Carrión, Jorge. Bookshops: A Reader’s History, translated by Peter Bush. Biblioasis, n.d..

Davis, Joshua Clark. From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs. New York City, Columbia University Press, n.d..

Macleish, Archibald. “A Free Man’s Books”. Mount Vernon, The Peter Pauper Press, n.d..

Media

“Eyewitness to History: Steamtown Mall Opens.” YouTube, YouTube, 4 Oct. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaKz7Eoche8. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

Jones, Stanley. Silkman House, Scranton. 26 April 1936, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, PA,35-SCRAN,1-2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Silkman_House,_Scranton.jpg. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

Mebane, R. Ramsey. Scranton Public Library, Albright Memorial Building, Scranton, Pa.. Boston Public Library Tichnors collection, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scranton_Public_Library,Albright_Memorial_Building,_Scranton,_Pa(63515).jpg. Accessed 8 Oct 2023.

The Times Tribune. “Invitations to the Opening.” Newspapers by Ancestry, https://www.newspapers.com/article/75815117/the-times-tribune/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

VisualDimension292. “The Marketplace At Steamtown, Scranton, PA.” Reddit, 26 July 2022, https://www.reddit.com/r/deadmalls/comments/w8x3d3/the_marketplace_at_steamtown_scranton_pa/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

weluvpa, NYRangers 2008, SteelCityRising, et al. “3 Business’s closed in Downtown Scranton and soon to be 4 (Wilkes-Barre: to rent, condo).” City-Data.com, 5 January 2008, https://www.city-data.com/forum/northeastern-pennsylvania/226476-3-businesss-closed-downtown-scranton-soon.html. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

Research

Domitrovic, Brian. “The Origin of the Rust Belt – Part 1.” Forbes, 9 Oct 2022, https://www.forbes.com/sites/briandomitrovic/2022/10/09/the-origin-of-the-rust-belt–part-1/?sh=5552712d104f. Accessed 8 Oct 2023.

ExplorePAhistory.com. “Terence V. Powderley Historical Marker.” https://explorepahistory.com/hmarker.php?markerId=1-A-3BE. Accessed 8 Oct 2023.

Falchek, David. “Mall at Steamtown looks to recreate image.” The Times-Tribune, 24 June 2020, https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/news/mall-at-steamtown-looks-to-recreate-image/article_42af6213-fc05-5506-ad23-d9b293710416.html. Accessed 8 Oct 2023.

Lackawanna County Library System. https://lclshome.org/. Accessed 8 Oct 2023.

Lackawanna Historical Society. “The Silkman Houses and the Silkmans”. The Lackawanna Historical Society Bulletin, 5(5), May-June 1971.

LaChiusa, Chuck. “Lackawanna Steel Company and Buffalo and Susquehanna Iron Company”. History of Buffalo, https://buffaloah.com/h/lacksteel/index.html. Accessed 8 2023.

Lange, Stacy. “Labor Day’s rich history in Scranton.” WNEP16, 6 September 2021, https://www.wnep.com/article/news/local/lackawanna-county/labor-days-rich-history-in-scranton-courthouse-square/523-19c35c1b-5368-4831-92ed-29f7a26ad0e4. Accessed 8 Oct 2023.

Lockwood, Jim. “Scranton Public Library opens book on strengths, weaknesses to plan improvements.” The Times-Tribune, 19 January 2021, https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/news/scranton-public-library-opens-book-on-strengths-weaknesses-to-plan-improvements/article_296d2968-f818-548a-bd5a-0ee5f422338b.html. Accessed 8 Oct 2023.

Lockwood, Jim. “Scranton Public Library takes community pulse.” The Times-Tribune, 6 July 2020, https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/news/scranton-public-library-surveys-community-on-next-chapter/article_df861692-bcb6-57be-9483-d6e5d0bb16f2.html. Accessed 8 Oct 2023.

Malls and Retail Wiki. “The Marketplace at Steamtown”, Fandom, https://malls.fandom.com/wiki/The_Marketplace_at_Steamtown. Accessed 8 Oct 2023.

Palumno, Andy. “Welcome to The Marketplace At Steamtown.” WNEP16, 31 May 2016, https://www.city-data.com/forum/northeastern-pennsylvania/226476-3-businesss-closed-downtown-scranton-soon.html.

Pennsylvania Labor History Society. “Timeline of Labor History in Pennsylvania.” https://palaborhistorysociety.org/timeline-of-labor-history-in-pennsylvania/. Accessed 8 Oct 2023.

PowerLibrary. “Scranton Public Library – History of the Scranton Public Library.” https://digitalarchives.powerlibrary.org/papd/islandora/object/papd%3Apscrl-hspl. Accessed 8 Oct 2023.

The Times Tribune. “Library Ownership of Church Site Official.” Newspapers by Ancestry, https://www.newspapers.com/image/639879435/?clipping_id=77917182&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjYzOTg3OTQzNSwiaWF0IjoxNjk2Nzk1NDkwLCJleHAiOjE2OTY4ODE4OTB9.SnomedkhUTiaeFgwu9BsG3cPaUiZTudTp4H1k76AnlU. Accessed 8 Oct 2023.

The Times Tribune. “Silkman House Branch Library Opens Tonight.” Newspapers by Ancestry, https://www.newspapers.com/article/77980305/the-times-tribune/. Accessed 8 Oct 2023.

Molly’s Books and Records: Knowing Where It Is Now by Where It Was Then

Molly’s Books and Records: Knowing Where It Is Now by Where It Was Then

Centuries before Molly’s Books and Records would reside in its little townhouse with white, vinyl siding, the neighborhood of South Philadelphia belonged to a much more nuanced past and group of people.

Historically, South Philadelphia has been a haven for Italian immigration since the late 18th century, according to Stefano Luconi in The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia’s article “Italians and Italy.” Though Italian immigrants initially sought to benefit from the major trading port that was Philadelphia in the 1700s, the city saw a major boom in Italians seeking refuge after the failures of the Italian Unification in the late 18th century. Many of these immigrants–though in the past they tended to be more artistically and intellectually inclined–became laborers in their settled areas of Philadelphia. Specifically, Italian immigrants settled in “a neighborhood bounded by Christain, Seventh, Carpenter, and Ninth Streets in a South Philadelphia district where the price of real estate was lower than in other areas” (Luconi). 

This neighborhood that Luconi describes constitutes a small–but certainly significant–portion of today’s Little Italy, Philadelphia. 

The influence of Italian immigration in this area of South Philadelphia is not lost today, even after centuries since the peak of immigration and as other ethnic groups settled in the neighborhood. According to Pamela Forsythe in the Broad Street Review’s “The Italian Legacy in Philadelphia: History, Culture, People, and Ideas” article, Little Italy was the core for Italian-immigrant life, and it was here that they attempted to preserve Italian identity in a Western culture. For example, when Italian immigrants settled in the neighborhood they were able to adapt their housing to supply Italian goods and services for Italian households; specifically, Forsythe explains “‘the first-floor front was easily adapted to commerce, with a second door and a shop window.’” Most notably, they sought to preserve the core of their culture–authentic Italian cuisine–by refusing to shop American fare and instead shop locally at Italian-owned food markets, now officially known as the Italian Market of Little Italy (Forsythe). These efforts to preserve the core of Italian culture are still evident today, as Italian-cuisine businesses stretch for about ten blocks down South 9th Street, selling everything from fresh produce, meats, gelato, and even kitchenware. So it is a curious wonder to see an indie bookstore–where cookbooks are sold alongside records and DVDs–living among this renowned myriad of Italian-cuisine businesses.

How did Molly Russakoff, owner of this books and records shop, manage to fit this seemingly outlier-of-a-business into this gastronomic environment? 

Well, Russakoff’s history with the community of Little Italy is almost as extensive and complex as the history of South Philadelphia. This history dates back to the 1980s, well over a decade before the opening of Molly’s Books and Records. Between 1982 and 1986, Russakoff’s father, Jerome Russakoff, opened his own indie bookstore–Russakoff’s Books and Records–on 259 South 10th Street. Similar to Molly’s Books and Records, Russakoff’s Books and Records sold a variety of products aside from used books. In fact, as the Buzzfile report states, the shop’s inventory included: used books, rare books, CDs, tapes, and records. Eventually, in 1997 Jerome handed down ownership of the shop to Molly Russakoff’s brother, Joe Russakoff. Since then, Russakoff’s Books and Records has officially been known as Mostly Books and has relocated to 529 Bainbridge Street in the early 2000s. Considering this familial history of bookselling, it should not have come to any surprise that Molly Russakoff would continue the tradition and open up her own bookshop.

Still, the journey to opening Molly’s Books and Records was anything but unidirectional. Although Russakoff grew up approximately thirty-minutes outside Little Italy in Elkins Park, she sought to create a connection with the community of Little Italy in a variety of ways. According to A.D. Amorosi in The Philadelphia Inquirer‘s “Reading and More at Molly’s Bookstore” article, one of Russakoff’s earliest ventures into the neighborhood was through 9th Street Books & Records, in which she owned and operated the shop for ten years after its opening in 1987. Nevertheless, three years after she closed the doors to 9th Street Books & Records, she opened Molly’s Café on 910-912 Christian Street, which is just about two blocks away from today’s Molly’s Books and Records. At Molly’s Café, Russakoff nurtured her passion for literature and cuisine, and sought to utilize these passions to connect with South Philadelphia’s literary and gastronomic community. When Molly’s Café closed down in the early 2000s, Russakoff was devastated and contemplated leaving South Philadelphia for good (Amorosi). Yet, “[Russakoff’s] connection to literature–writing, teaching, selling–runs as deep as her adoration of her neighborhood” (Amorosi), so she decided to give South Philadelphia another chance. Thus in 2002, not long after the closure of Molly’s Café, she purchased a little townhouse with white, vinyl siding, in the heart of Little Italy. Today, this townhouse is recognized as Molly’s Books and Records, but that was not always the case in the early 2000s.

Over twenty years ago, Russakoff sought to create a literary space in a community that prides itself for its historic Italian gastronomy. In 2002, this venture began in a little townhouse on 1010 South 9th Street, with the name Molly’s Bookstore. Unlike today’s Molly’s Books and Records, Molly’s Bookstore strictly sold used-books according to The Secondhand Beat’s “Molly’s Books & Records” article. For a while, Molly’s Bookstore thrived in Little Italy–in spite of its limited inventory and its unusual location among Italian-food markets. Nevertheless, this success eventually faded with the rise of digital bookselling. In 2006, indie booksellers were threatened by the growing presence of major online book-retailers, such as Amazon. This threat, as Russakoff explains, makes selling books more difficult, as online bookselling turned customers away from brick-and-mortar shops and altered their shopping behaviors (Amorosi). Nonetheless, Russakoff briefly turned towards digital bookselling on Amazon. This attempt to keep-up with the changing times proved ethically difficult, as Russakoff believed “selling books on the Internet felt like working for Wal-Mart. She felt lonely and dislocated from her community” (Amorosi). There was no easy solution that would have saved Molly’s Bookstore from Amazon and other rising book-retailers–not if Russakoff wanted to compromise her stance on the politics of digital bookselling. Consequently, Molly’s Bookstore closed down in 2007.

Still, Russakoff refused to be chased out of Little Italy. Therefore, in 2008 she opened a natural produce shop–Bella Vista Natural Foods–in the place where Molly’s Bookstore used to operate. According to Phila Place’s “Bella Vista Natural Foods: ‘It Becomes Where We Belong’” article, Bella Vista Natural Foods was received well by the community, since “an organic grocery seem[ed] to be the one genre of food that was missing on the market.” In the brief time Bella Vista Natural Foods operated, the shop had become a space for the community to gather. Yet, something was amiss and Russakoff wanted to return to bookselling, but she wasn’t sure how that was possible.

To reference W.G. Rogers in Wise Men Fish Here, a successful bookseller should only be “concerned with the kind of books that matter to the kind of people that matter” (77), and this was a lesson Russakoff had to embrace in order get back into the bookselling business. By the time she closed down Bella Vista Natural Foods sometime before 2010, Russakoff had already been growing her collection of cookbooks for the interested, culinary community of Little Italy. According to Archibald MacLeish in A Free Man’s Books, “true books are sold by the enthusiasm of those who know them and respect them” (13), and this is especially evident in Russakoff’s success with selling her collection of cookbooks. This cookbook collection has come to be an integral part of Molly’s Books and Records, and as Abigail Weils notes in “There’s No Place in Philly Quite Like Molly’s Books and Records,” Russakoff has taken great care into growing its numbers and variety to authentically represent the diversity of gastronomy and the culinary culture of Little Italy.

Even though there was a market for cookbooks in Little Italy–considering its gastronomic culture–Russakoff recognized she could not return to only selling books, not with the competition of Amazon. So when Russakoff partnered with her now-husband Joe Ankenbrand, they expanded their inventory to include: used books, records, DVDs, and most notably cookbooks (The Secondhand Beats). As a result, the little townhouse on 1010 South 9th Street reopened in 2010 under the new and settled name of Molly’s Books and Records.

Every business venture Molly Russakoff made in South Philadelphia was an attempt to create place, which according to Tim Cresswell is essentially defined as “a space invested with meaning” (12). Time and time again, Russakoff invested meaning into the building on 1010 South 9th Street. For as long as these businesses operated–if not only for a brief moment–they connected with the community and established relationships with the people of Little Italy. Still, overtime, the meaning of this place on 1010 South 9th Street has changed to the shape of the changing times and changing consumer-behavior. For example, expanding and diversifying the inventory of Molly’s Books and Records was a response to the difficulty of selling only books. Additionally, while Russakoff refuses to adapt her bookshop to the digital world of bookselling, she runs an Instagram account for Molly’s Books and Records to connect with a wider audience outside of Little Italy. Hence, the meaning of a place is not fixed in time.

A place like Molly’s Books and Records is continuously shaped and reshaped by the circumstances of its past and the changing times of the present.

Works Cited

Amorosi, A.D. “Reading and More at Molly’s Bookstore.” The Philadelphia Inquire, 14 Oct. 2007, www.inquirer.com/philly/entertainment/20071014_Molly_Russakoffs_new_Italian_Market_shop_will_strive_to_be_a_center_for_homeschooling_.html. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

“Bella Vista Natural Foods: ‘It Becomes Where We Belong.'” Phila Place, m.philaplace.org/story/548/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

Cresswell, Tim. “Defining Place.” Place, Blackwell Publishing.

Forsythe, Pamela J. “The Italian Legacy in Philadelphia: History, Culture, People, and Ideas.” Broad Street Review, 18 Jan. 2022, www.broadstreetreview.com/reviews/the-italian-legacy-in-philadelphia-history-culture-people-and-ideas-edited-by-andrea-canepari-and-judith-goode. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

“Jerome Russakoff: Russakoff’s Books & Records.” Buzzfile, www.buzzfile.com/business/Russakoff!s-Books.And.Records-215-592-8380. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

Luconi, Stefano. “Italians and Italy.” The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, 2017, philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/italians-and-italy/#:~:text=It%20was%2C%20therefore%2C%20no%20surprise,and%20Leghorn%20in%20their%20homeland. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

MacLeish, Archibald. A Free Man’s Books. Peter Pauper Press.

“Molly’s Books & Records.” The Secondhand Beat, 12 Mar. 2011, thesecondhandbeat.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/mollys-books-records-part-ii/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

Rogers, W.G. Wise Men Fish Here. Harcourt, Brace & World.Weil, Abigail. “There’s No Place in Philly Quite Like Molly’s Books & Records.” Eater Philadelphia, 13 Dec. 2021, philly.eater.com/2021/12/13/22820597/mollys-books-records-italian-market-bookstore-cookbooks. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

Made from Scratch: The History of the South Ninth Street Market and Molly’s Books & Records

Made from Scratch: The History of the South Ninth Street Market and Molly’s Books & Records

By Lexie Kauffman

The story behind Molly’s Books & Records began decades ago, just a six-minute drive from the store’s home on South Ninth Street.

Molly Russakoff in Molly’s Books & Records // Credit: Natalie Piserchio

Molly Russakoff, the namesake and owner of Molly’s Books & Records, bookstore journey began when she was born into a family of booksellers. Russakoff’s father owned a bookstore on 10th Street in Philadelphia, PA for years before turning ownership over to Russakoff’s younger brother who moved the business to another location within Philadelphia. Russakoff decided to take her familial business experience to a new property within the same marketplace that she has called home for 35 years.

Russakoff’s love of the written word doesn’t just come from her family roots in bookselling. Russakoff studied poetry at Naropa University in Bouler, Colorado. She also was a teaching assistant at “The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute in 1977 and 1978.” In 1993, she won a Pew Fellowship, a grant given annually to “12 exemplary artists working in the Philadelphia region.” In the early 2000’s, she also worked as an editor of Joss Magazine and the poetry editor of The Philadelphia Independent.

Around the time that she was working for Joss Magazine and The Philadelphia Independent, Russakoff purchased the property that is now known as Molly’s Books & Records. Before it became the beloved used bookstore that it is today, the property changed names numerous times under Russakoff’s ownership. It started as Molly’s Café, adapted to Bella Vista Natural Foods, and then switched to Molly’s Café and Bookstore. In 2009, it officially became Molly’s Books & Records, the name it has proudly displayed for the past 14 years.

Joe Ankenbrand, Russakoff’s husband, holds the musical roots in their partnership of Molly’s Books and Records. In 1964, Ankenbrand started collecting records and never looked back. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, Ankenbrand pursued his love of music with his band, Bunnydrums, which is described as a “sci-fi/angular/psychedelic/punk band” on Apple Music. Bunnydrums released three albums before breaking up in 1986 due to an aborted tour and member changes. According to their Apple Music biography, while they were together, they “focused their energies on their home scene and development of a Philly-based society of musicians and artists called the Funk Dungeon.” Since then, Ankenbrand has been very involved in the Philadelphia music scene, now choosing to serve that community by sourcing and selling records.

Molly’s Books & Records embraces its roots as Russakoff and Ankenbrand work tirelessly to connect with the already established Italian marketplace on South Ninth Street. Molly’s is just a small sliver of culture and history within “America’s oldest and continuously operating outdoor market”.

The market was born in the mid-to-late 1880s when a boarding house was opened by an Italian immigrant, Antonio Palumbo. This boarding house quickly became the heart of an Italian community of immigrants, creating the perfect atmosphere to nurture numerous local businesses. Food stalls, produce stands, butcher shops, and more started popping up along South Ninth Street.

In 1915, the commercial character of the Italian Market stabilized when the South Ninth Street Businessmen’s Association was founded. This organization focused on encouraging commercial growth within the Italian Marketplace geographical area. The association was made up of the “community’s leading businessmen (second-generation Italian Americans with ancestral roots in central and southern Italy and eastern Sicily).”  By forming this organization, these businessmen were able to get the rights of a corporation under the laws of Pennsylvania “in exchange for ensuring cleanliness, illumination, paving, and police protection within the boundaries specified in its charter.” Once the market had the rights of a corporation, the area was able to boom. More stores began popping up, and news of the marketplace spread. By 1940, the name “Italian Market” was common and well known throughout the city.

The marketplace started to become known for their cuisine. Around 1930, the famous Philadelphia cheesesteak was invented within the Italian Market by hot dog venders Pat and Harry Olivieri. The renowned sandwich is just one of many city favorites to come from this community. Today, over one hundred years later, many of the original vendors and businesses remain. However, the food market itself has diversified as new waves of immigration entered Philadelphia. In 1983, the first Korean-owned establishment joined the many businesses within the Italian Market. From then on, different cuisines – from Mexican, to Chinese, to Vietnamese – can now be found alongside the Italian classics. According to Visitphilly.com, “Award-winning restaurants and neighborhood favorites have solidified the market as a can’t-miss foodie destination.”

The marketplace is rich in culture and history, creating a place like no other, and their website says it best:

“Generations of immigrant families have lived and worked here side by side. Businesses continue to operate in an old-world fashion while recognizing current consumer trends. It is our hope that for the next 100 years S. 9th Street will continue to be a community of immigrants dedicated to the main street small business concept, servicing the community, while continuing this unique shopping tradition.”

-Italianmarketphilly.org

This is a comprehensive timeline of the information presented in this blog post. Green events relate to the Italian Marketplace. Red events are significant moments in Joe Ankenbrand's life and purple events are significant for Molly Russakoff. Blue events are for the store itself.

Molly’s Books & Records was lucky to be surrounded by such a strong community when the livelihood of the neighborhood was threatened in 2000, the same year that Molly Russakoff bought the property that eventually became Molly’s Books & Records. Because of a high rate of vacant buildings and land as well as tax delinquency, the Philadelphia City Planning Commission declared that the South Ninth Street neighborhood, which included the Italian Market, was blighted.

According to Vacant Property Research Network, a blighted area is classified as “a physical space or structure that is no longer in acceptable or beneficial condition to its community. A property that is blighted has lost its value as a social good or economic commodity or its functional status as a livable space.” Russakoff had just purchased the building and her dreams for a successful business were already being challenged.

Luckily, the long-standing community of South Ninth Street fought back, working to revitalize the area before the prospective redevelopment date in 2006. The city and the business community worked to “improve sanitation and to rehabilitate the market stalls and awnings.” The storefronts were redone to “reflect the individual tastes, trends, and upkeep of the vendors, with varied facades of red brick, yellow brick, faux stone, aluminum siding, and stucco.” The redesign was successful, and the businesses continued to grow. In fact, in 2008, the founding families of the marketplace sponsored a historic marker to celebrate the heritage and importance of the Italian Market.

A snapshot of the extensive cookbook collection at Molly’s Books & Records // Credit: Abigail Weil

Russakoff and Ankenbrand have learned to lean into the supportive community as they source the products for their store. They are also very conscious of reflecting the community outside of their doors accurately, providing a perfect example of the relationship that exists between bookselling and social responsibility, as established by sociologist Laura J. Miller in her book, Reluctant Capitalists. Miller explains that “For those involved in the book business, furthering diversity is a form of social responsibility” (Miller 82). Russakoff takes the responsibility seriously as she stocks their cookbook section, the largest tie between the store and the endless cuisines outside. Russakoff “prizes global diversity” by ensuring that her store represents different cuisines as authentically as possible. The store has shelves full of different cultures, from Pennsylvania Dutch, to Scandinavian, and so much more. Russakoff ensures that anyone can find their culture in her bookstore and presents endless opportunities for her community to learn about different cuisines through her hand-picked literature.

Joe Ankenbrand and Mrs. Stevenson. Mrs. Stevenson has lived at Molly’s Books & Records for the past 5-6 years. She’s not the first store cat that Molly’s has had, but according to Molly Russakoff, she’s “right up there with some of the best ones the store has had.” // Credit: Kimberly Paynter / WHYY

Molly’s Books & Records may fit Miller’s ideas about social responsibility well, but they forgo the patterns of Miller’s other research. Miller discusses the impact of technology on bookselling in her book and establishes that many chains and larger bookstores lean heavily on technology when sourcing their inventory. She describes an automatic system with technology at the forefront. “…new technology has allowed for the scale of operations to increase so that a central headquarters can oversee the buying for hundreds of outlets that serve diverse populations. Reorders for books are automatically generated…” (Miller 75). Russakoff and Ankenbrand run their store in a completely different way than the chains that Miller describes. In fact, Molly’s Books & Records rejects the concept of a technology driven store. In an interview in 2015, Ankenbrand stated that they shy away from an online presence, “When Molly and I started this place together, we said we wanted the best little store in the world. For instance, we don’t put anything online. Anything a customer wants can be found right in the store.” Russakoff and Ankenbrand choose each piece of merchandise that they sell in the store and focus on creating community in face-to-face interactions rather than through a screen, a strategy that has been successful for the past fourteen years of business.

Russakoff and Ankenbrand stepped into a pre-existing community to spread their love of books and records with the populace, taking opportunities to share their passions and explore diverse cuisines through their cookbook section. Their success over the past fourteen years would not be possible without the century of history in the Italian Market and the community that has prospered alongside it.

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Images Used

Crowds Next to Pizza Stand. The South Ninth Street Italian Market, www.italianmarketphilly.org/history.html. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

Father and Daughter. The South Ninth Street Italian Market, www.italianmarketphilly.org/history.html. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

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Selling Sanwiches. The South Ninth Street Italian Market, www.italianmarketphilly.org/history.html. Accessed 8 Oct. 2023.

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