Sunday, March 26, 1995
When Fourth Ave was Book Row of America XV Marvin Mondlin
When Fourth Avenue was Book Row of America - part 2
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis May 2004
This installment completes the review of a history of our area, Book Row, An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade, by Marvin Mondlin and Roy Meador, 2003, $28.
To continue recollections of the book people of my generation, some Book Row (Fourth Avenue, 14th Street to Cooper Square) stalwarts managed to hold back the gentrifiers and real estate developers until the 1970s, before moving or giving up the business. The scholarly Wilfred Pesky, of Schulte’s Books (across from the coop building on the site of the burned down Wanamaker’s, also known as terrorist victim Leon Klinghoffer’s home) was the heir of the avenue’s flagship store, known for its huge stock, low prices and extensive theology collection. Following his untimely demise in 1966 a group of employees took over and concluded, after a few years of struggle, that the humongous stock had become quite outdated. The location was taken over by the late George Voss, a well-known liquidator of bookstores in distress, who himself eventually ended up selling from card tables laden with books, kitty-corners across from the Strand.
Biblo and Tannen, who owned and occupied a narrow five-story building on Fourth Avenue near Ninth Street, was known as a rare fiction house, with a huge stock of novels on the second floor, their rare book room. They, as Canaveral Press, also reprinted out-of-copyright books and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels. As a personal aside, our friend Charlotte, widow of a legal and Aristotelian scholar, had found out that B&T had reprinted his chief work, and complained, whereupon Alice, the kindly bookkeeper, sent her periodic statements of sales and small checks, and made herself available for chats.
Another reprinter of scholarly works was Pageant Book Company, owned by Chip Chafetz and Sidney Solomon. WWII vets, they learned the trade by working for Henry Rubinowitz’s Fourth Avenue Bookstore at 138. The Pageant was a known auction buyer of imperfect incunabula rich in woodcuts and engravings, particularly copies of Hartmann Schedel’s 1496 Nuremberg Chronicles and old Psalters, which they broke up and sold by the page, suitable for framing. Their reprint house was Cooper Square Publishers, Inc., through which they republished I. N. Phelps Stokes’s Iconography of Manhattan Island and, in 1961, a two volume facsimile edition of the Gutenberg Bible. Guided by daughter Shirley Solomon, Pageant survives in Soho, and has a booth in the annual Union Square Christmas Shop.
George Rubinowitz, who died in 1997 at the age of 98, had studied for the rabbinate but switched to reading books about books at the Brooklyn Library. His Fourth Avenue Book Store had a second-floor rare book room, housing treasures purchased at auctions by his former schoolteacher wife Jenny. George was easy on discounts, but Jenny ferociously held her ground. It was a pleasure to listen to their back-and-forth, thick accents flying.
One would hear pure New York speech from Ernie Wavrovics, who with his seldom seen twin brother Louis (or did he confuse us by also answering to the name of Ernie?) ruled over a book basement at 530 East 14th Street, edge of Alphabet City. They lived on a barge and were famous for buying unclaimed suitcases at hotel auctions, and particularly, for their 1947 purchase of the condemned Homer and Langley Collyer mansion. They were granted it for the purpose of clearing it out, after the hoarded treasures collapsed and killed the reclusive brothers. Whether they rescued any really valuable books is unclear.
Another adventurous reprint publisher was Jack Brussel, of the United Book Guild at 100 Fourth Avenue. He reprinted both the Gutenberg Bible (1960, 3 vols) and the Nuremberg Chronicles, as well as classic works of erotica, then illegal. An annual transoceanic traveler, he brought back from Britain stacks of ukiyoe, old Japanese color prints, many of which ended back in Japan. An irrepressible book enthusiast and acquirer, he was constantly on the search for editions of Aesop’s Fables and Napoleana for his collections, and would lead us, a small group of like-minded people, on Saturday expeditions in lower Manhattan, Harlem (Smith’s Books), Brooklyn (Binkin’s bookstore) and out of town, looking for finds. For the record, the group’s permanent members in the 1960s also included Sunny Warshall, whose Business Americana collection is now part of the Smithsonian, Dr. S.R. Shapiro, founder of the1940’s Cumulative Book Auction Records, Sam Orlinick, a dealer in social sciences and an admirer of Mozart, Paul Cranefield, PHD and MD, editor, historian and heart researcher at the Rockefeller University, who was on an unending search for his Grail, William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis (1628) , and Milt Reissman (much quoted by Marvin Mondlin), a button manufacturer and children’s book expert who eventually turned professional and opened Victoria Books.
Sometimes we had the pleasure of Jack’s scholarly brother I. R. Brussel, author of rare book bibliographies and an inveterate storyteller, recounting his personal experiences with the literary greats, such as the womanizing adventures of Theodore Dreiser.
These reminiscences were prompted by the marvelous collection of anecdotes and facts in the Mondlin and Meador book. I have tried not to steal their thunder, there are many more stories to read (you can buy a discounted and signed copy at the Strand). T&V country people are New York’s greatest readers - look at all the Barnes & Noble stores we have been blessed with – and they remember the Book Row. My 1995 tales about the book people on the Avenue elicited more street-corner comments than any other subject matter that I covered. Feel free to send your recollections, c/o T&V, or e-mail Mdobelis@glic.com.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:20 AM 0 comments
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis May 2004
This installment completes the review of a history of our area, Book Row, An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Antiquarian Book Trade, by Marvin Mondlin and Roy Meador, 2003, $28.
To continue recollections of the book people of my generation, some Book Row (Fourth Avenue, 14th Street to Cooper Square) stalwarts managed to hold back the gentrifiers and real estate developers until the 1970s, before moving or giving up the business. The scholarly Wilfred Pesky, of Schulte’s Books (across from the coop building on the site of the burned down Wanamaker’s, also known as terrorist victim Leon Klinghoffer’s home) was the heir of the avenue’s flagship store, known for its huge stock, low prices and extensive theology collection. Following his untimely demise in 1966 a group of employees took over and concluded, after a few years of struggle, that the humongous stock had become quite outdated. The location was taken over by the late George Voss, a well-known liquidator of bookstores in distress, who himself eventually ended up selling from card tables laden with books, kitty-corners across from the Strand.
Biblo and Tannen, who owned and occupied a narrow five-story building on Fourth Avenue near Ninth Street, was known as a rare fiction house, with a huge stock of novels on the second floor, their rare book room. They, as Canaveral Press, also reprinted out-of-copyright books and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels. As a personal aside, our friend Charlotte, widow of a legal and Aristotelian scholar, had found out that B&T had reprinted his chief work, and complained, whereupon Alice, the kindly bookkeeper, sent her periodic statements of sales and small checks, and made herself available for chats.
Another reprinter of scholarly works was Pageant Book Company, owned by Chip Chafetz and Sidney Solomon. WWII vets, they learned the trade by working for Henry Rubinowitz’s Fourth Avenue Bookstore at 138. The Pageant was a known auction buyer of imperfect incunabula rich in woodcuts and engravings, particularly copies of Hartmann Schedel’s 1496 Nuremberg Chronicles and old Psalters, which they broke up and sold by the page, suitable for framing. Their reprint house was Cooper Square Publishers, Inc., through which they republished I. N. Phelps Stokes’s Iconography of Manhattan Island and, in 1961, a two volume facsimile edition of the Gutenberg Bible. Guided by daughter Shirley Solomon, Pageant survives in Soho, and has a booth in the annual Union Square Christmas Shop.
George Rubinowitz, who died in 1997 at the age of 98, had studied for the rabbinate but switched to reading books about books at the Brooklyn Library. His Fourth Avenue Book Store had a second-floor rare book room, housing treasures purchased at auctions by his former schoolteacher wife Jenny. George was easy on discounts, but Jenny ferociously held her ground. It was a pleasure to listen to their back-and-forth, thick accents flying.
One would hear pure New York speech from Ernie Wavrovics, who with his seldom seen twin brother Louis (or did he confuse us by also answering to the name of Ernie?) ruled over a book basement at 530 East 14th Street, edge of Alphabet City. They lived on a barge and were famous for buying unclaimed suitcases at hotel auctions, and particularly, for their 1947 purchase of the condemned Homer and Langley Collyer mansion. They were granted it for the purpose of clearing it out, after the hoarded treasures collapsed and killed the reclusive brothers. Whether they rescued any really valuable books is unclear.
Another adventurous reprint publisher was Jack Brussel, of the United Book Guild at 100 Fourth Avenue. He reprinted both the Gutenberg Bible (1960, 3 vols) and the Nuremberg Chronicles, as well as classic works of erotica, then illegal. An annual transoceanic traveler, he brought back from Britain stacks of ukiyoe, old Japanese color prints, many of which ended back in Japan. An irrepressible book enthusiast and acquirer, he was constantly on the search for editions of Aesop’s Fables and Napoleana for his collections, and would lead us, a small group of like-minded people, on Saturday expeditions in lower Manhattan, Harlem (Smith’s Books), Brooklyn (Binkin’s bookstore) and out of town, looking for finds. For the record, the group’s permanent members in the 1960s also included Sunny Warshall, whose Business Americana collection is now part of the Smithsonian, Dr. S.R. Shapiro, founder of the1940’s Cumulative Book Auction Records, Sam Orlinick, a dealer in social sciences and an admirer of Mozart, Paul Cranefield, PHD and MD, editor, historian and heart researcher at the Rockefeller University, who was on an unending search for his Grail, William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis (1628) , and Milt Reissman (much quoted by Marvin Mondlin), a button manufacturer and children’s book expert who eventually turned professional and opened Victoria Books.
Sometimes we had the pleasure of Jack’s scholarly brother I. R. Brussel, author of rare book bibliographies and an inveterate storyteller, recounting his personal experiences with the literary greats, such as the womanizing adventures of Theodore Dreiser.
These reminiscences were prompted by the marvelous collection of anecdotes and facts in the Mondlin and Meador book. I have tried not to steal their thunder, there are many more stories to read (you can buy a discounted and signed copy at the Strand). T&V country people are New York’s greatest readers - look at all the Barnes & Noble stores we have been blessed with – and they remember the Book Row. My 1995 tales about the book people on the Avenue elicited more street-corner comments than any other subject matter that I covered. Feel free to send your recollections, c/o T&V, or e-mail Mdobelis@glic.com.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:20 AM 0 comments
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 7:48 PM 
