Thursday, April 29, 2004
When Fourth Avener was the Book Row of America - part 1
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Speaking of treasure hunting sites – the Spanish doubloons from Nuestra Senora de Atocha, buried gold at Hall’s Harbor and the Money Pit on Oak Island in Nova Scotia - believe me , we have been there, and, they offer nothing that surpasses the thrill of scouting for sleepers (underpriced rare books) on the Book Row. That was how Fourth Avenue, 14th Street to Astor Place, was known in the 1950s through 70s, when the area was the American center of antiquarian book trade, right here in T&V Country. In fact, a number of ST/PCV people worked there.
It is therefore with great pleasure that I cheer the long awaited publication of Book Row, An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Book Trade, by Marvin Mondlin and Roy Meador, Carrol & Graff, N.Y., 2003, $28. (deeply discounted and signed copies available at The Strand). It is a thoroughly researched and detailed history of the strange practitioners and the locale that made New York the center of a small but important universe, the antiquarian book trade.
The concentration of book dealers started in the 1890s, with young George D. Smith at 930 Broadway, next door to the present-day Strand. While still in his 20s, he began to dominate book auctions here and in London, filling the San Marino library shelves of Henry E. Huntington the railroad magnate and other millionaire collectors. A precursor of the legendary Dr A.S.W. Rosenbach, he cut a storybook figure that endeared him to his mega dollar patrons. He eventually moved uptown, leaving behind a bustling and expanding arena for book lovers, as downtown dealers moved up and new stores opened. If it were not for the overpopulation and the building boom that drove out the bookstores in the 1960s-70s, we’d be still enjoying our pleasures. Luckily, The Strand at Broadway and 11th with its eight miles of book shelves - or is it yet 16 miles - survives and thrives, and some new enterprises have opened, particularly on 18th Street.
Anyway, the Book Row grew, and by the 1950s it had expanded to cover not only Fourth Avenue from 14th Street to Astor Place but also parts of Broadway and the side streets, particularly the Bible House block, 8th to 9th Streets east of Fourth. About three dozen stores contended for the readers and collectors, not counting the 50 satellites within a two mile radius, and enthusiasts often spent whole Saturdays wandering from shop to shop. The outdoors bargain stands alone took hours to cover. The native-born book dealers were supplemented by scholarly immigrants freeing Czarist Russia, and later, Hitler’s Germany. There were nihilists, anarchists, socialists turned entrepreneurs, among them some sharp practitioners who were not above offering pennies for books worth hundreds, as Walter Goldwater might characterize them. Walter, a native New Yorker, graduate of University of Michigan and a Trotskyite, spent some time in Soviet Union, until, disenchanted with the Communist solution, he returned to open the University Place Book Shop specializing in Socialism and Africana. His wife, Eleanor Lowenstein of the Corner Bookstore, was New York’s foremost cookbook expert.
But Fourth Avenue gentrified, and the dealers had to move, or perish. This was happening, starting in my period, the 1950s. The cigar-chomping Sam Weiser, a small fast moving dapper gentlemanly deler, had a narrow store near 14th Street, and kept many calf-bound 17 and 18th Century octavos on his 35-cent stand, giving the passersby a thrill of rubbing our hands against history, while reserving the depths of the store for his main trade, the seekers of books about the weird and the occult. I still have the Addison and Steele essays, and the explorer and pirate Captain William Dampier’s Treatise on Winds, all buried somewhere, and a little disbound German folksy woodcut tome that I suspect might be a near incunabulum (pre-1500 publication)..Eventually Weiser’s moved to a huge, cavernous 845 Broadway location, the general books managed by his brother Ben, a gathering place for the after-hours book lovers .In the 1970s it relocated twice on Broadway, then to East 24th Street, but not for long. The occult branch of the firm survives, in a third generation, up North in Maine, as a mail-order publisher and dealer.
Across Broadway from Weiser’s, at 856, was the transplanted Arcadia, with the knowledgeable Milton and Dorothy Applebaum ruling over crowded ceiling-high stacks of books. When the high rents overwhelmed Broadway as well, they moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico and turned to mail order.
The only ex-Fourth Avenue bookstore surviving and flourishing in the city, at 828 Broadway is the Strand, founded by Ben Bass in 1929 and continued by his son Fred and now also granddaughter Nancy. Enterpreneurship, expansion, use of the Internet and ownership of the building seem to be the clues to success. Our chief author, Marvin Mondlin, their recently retired book buyer, has been associated with the store since 1951, with time off for stints as independent book dealer both here and in Belgium. It should be noted that the book, Book Row, has been in the making for decades, and, fortunately for us, Marvin has interviewed many stalwarts of the antiquarian book trade who are no longer with us. His earlier book, Appraisals, A Guide for Bookmen, is highly regarded in the trade. The other author, Roy Meador , from Ann Arbor, has written about the book trade for major periodicals as well as for collectors’ publications, including a research piece about Thomas Jefferson and the LOC that I have mislaid, to my regret.
More on the topic next week. Meanwhile, visit the Stuyvesant Square Park gardens this Spring week, and enjoy the white and purple blooming trees and the tulips.
Speaking of treasure hunting sites – the Spanish doubloons from Nuestra Senora de Atocha, buried gold at Hall’s Harbor and the Money Pit on Oak Island in Nova Scotia - believe me , we have been there, and, they offer nothing that surpasses the thrill of scouting for sleepers (underpriced rare books) on the Book Row. That was how Fourth Avenue, 14th Street to Astor Place, was known in the 1950s through 70s, when the area was the American center of antiquarian book trade, right here in T&V Country. In fact, a number of ST/PCV people worked there.
It is therefore with great pleasure that I cheer the long awaited publication of Book Row, An Anecdotal and Pictorial History of the Book Trade, by Marvin Mondlin and Roy Meador, Carrol & Graff, N.Y., 2003, $28. (deeply discounted and signed copies available at The Strand). It is a thoroughly researched and detailed history of the strange practitioners and the locale that made New York the center of a small but important universe, the antiquarian book trade.
The concentration of book dealers started in the 1890s, with young George D. Smith at 930 Broadway, next door to the present-day Strand. While still in his 20s, he began to dominate book auctions here and in London, filling the San Marino library shelves of Henry E. Huntington the railroad magnate and other millionaire collectors. A precursor of the legendary Dr A.S.W. Rosenbach, he cut a storybook figure that endeared him to his mega dollar patrons. He eventually moved uptown, leaving behind a bustling and expanding arena for book lovers, as downtown dealers moved up and new stores opened. If it were not for the overpopulation and the building boom that drove out the bookstores in the 1960s-70s, we’d be still enjoying our pleasures. Luckily, The Strand at Broadway and 11th with its eight miles of book shelves - or is it yet 16 miles - survives and thrives, and some new enterprises have opened, particularly on 18th Street.
Anyway, the Book Row grew, and by the 1950s it had expanded to cover not only Fourth Avenue from 14th Street to Astor Place but also parts of Broadway and the side streets, particularly the Bible House block, 8th to 9th Streets east of Fourth. About three dozen stores contended for the readers and collectors, not counting the 50 satellites within a two mile radius, and enthusiasts often spent whole Saturdays wandering from shop to shop. The outdoors bargain stands alone took hours to cover. The native-born book dealers were supplemented by scholarly immigrants freeing Czarist Russia, and later, Hitler’s Germany. There were nihilists, anarchists, socialists turned entrepreneurs, among them some sharp practitioners who were not above offering pennies for books worth hundreds, as Walter Goldwater might characterize them. Walter, a native New Yorker, graduate of University of Michigan and a Trotskyite, spent some time in Soviet Union, until, disenchanted with the Communist solution, he returned to open the University Place Book Shop specializing in Socialism and Africana. His wife, Eleanor Lowenstein of the Corner Bookstore, was New York’s foremost cookbook expert.
But Fourth Avenue gentrified, and the dealers had to move, or perish. This was happening, starting in my period, the 1950s. The cigar-chomping Sam Weiser, a small fast moving dapper gentlemanly deler, had a narrow store near 14th Street, and kept many calf-bound 17 and 18th Century octavos on his 35-cent stand, giving the passersby a thrill of rubbing our hands against history, while reserving the depths of the store for his main trade, the seekers of books about the weird and the occult. I still have the Addison and Steele essays, and the explorer and pirate Captain William Dampier’s Treatise on Winds, all buried somewhere, and a little disbound German folksy woodcut tome that I suspect might be a near incunabulum (pre-1500 publication)..Eventually Weiser’s moved to a huge, cavernous 845 Broadway location, the general books managed by his brother Ben, a gathering place for the after-hours book lovers .In the 1970s it relocated twice on Broadway, then to East 24th Street, but not for long. The occult branch of the firm survives, in a third generation, up North in Maine, as a mail-order publisher and dealer.
Across Broadway from Weiser’s, at 856, was the transplanted Arcadia, with the knowledgeable Milton and Dorothy Applebaum ruling over crowded ceiling-high stacks of books. When the high rents overwhelmed Broadway as well, they moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico and turned to mail order.
The only ex-Fourth Avenue bookstore surviving and flourishing in the city, at 828 Broadway is the Strand, founded by Ben Bass in 1929 and continued by his son Fred and now also granddaughter Nancy. Enterpreneurship, expansion, use of the Internet and ownership of the building seem to be the clues to success. Our chief author, Marvin Mondlin, their recently retired book buyer, has been associated with the store since 1951, with time off for stints as independent book dealer both here and in Belgium. It should be noted that the book, Book Row, has been in the making for decades, and, fortunately for us, Marvin has interviewed many stalwarts of the antiquarian book trade who are no longer with us. His earlier book, Appraisals, A Guide for Bookmen, is highly regarded in the trade. The other author, Roy Meador , from Ann Arbor, has written about the book trade for major periodicals as well as for collectors’ publications, including a research piece about Thomas Jefferson and the LOC that I have mislaid, to my regret.
More on the topic next week. Meanwhile, visit the Stuyvesant Square Park gardens this Spring week, and enjoy the white and purple blooming trees and the tulips.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:24 AM 
