Dammit! They're closing another Barnes and Noble's in Boston!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It was only a couple of months ago that the Barnes and Noble bookstore closest to me, on Route 1 in Saugus, closed because “they couldn’t reach an agreement with their landlord.” The employees didn’t like it, and they were reportedly looking into moving into some other property on route 1. There are several empty stores along this stretch of highway, but no indications that B&N is thinking about moving into any of them. I begin to despair that they ever will.

And now comes the announcement that the Barnes and Noble at the Prudential Center in Boston is closing in June.

And the reason? They couldn’t come to an agreement with their landlord. I’m beginning to suspect that reason is merely an excuse.

This isn’t merely another bookstore closing. The 33,000 square foot Barnes and Noble is the largest bookstore remaining in Boston. In fact, it’s the only large bookstore in a city that was once noted for large bookstores. As late as the 1990s there was a Waterstone’s on Essex Street in Back Bay that rose three and a half stories, a Borders AND a Barnes and Noble near Downtown Crossing, as well as the B&N at the Pru. And that’s in addition to all the bookstores and used bookstores scattered throughout the city.

Now, aside from college bookstores and a very few “name” used bookstores, the only two I can think of are the Trident Bookstore/Cafe and Posman Books (which just opened up a couple of years ago, to my vast surprise) in Back Bay. Both are pretty small and cramped.

For as long as I can remember there has always been a bookstore at the Prudential Center, usually a pretty big one. When I first came to the city there was Brentano’s, which was still there when i left. When I came back a decade later it was gone, but there was a WaldenBooks there. Then a Rizzoli. then the huge Barnes and Noble going in where a succession of restaurants 9starting with The Ground Round) had been. but now the Barnes and Noble will be gone, and I seriously doubt that anything will take its place. Barnes and Noble is one of the few big chains left. I doubt if books A Million/BAM will move in – their closest store is in Concord, NH. They closed their DC store at Dupont Circle eons ago. Amazon could conceivably do so, but they’re already closing their bricks-and-mortar bookstores. Borders and Waldenbooks and B. Dalton are only memories. Waterstones closed all their US operations except at transit locations.

It’s the end of an era. The Athens of America will no longer have any big bookstores. You can still go to The Harvard Coop or the Harvard Bookstore in Harvard Square in Cambridge, or travel out to the Brookline Booksmith or Porter Square Books, but it’s not the same, and )aside from the Coop) not as big.

Sic transit Bibliopolium mundi

2

Translation please [my translation site declined to translate because it thinks it is Romanian].

And I feel your bookstore pain. Spent 13 well spent years cruising Boston’s bookstores, invariable reached on the subway+walking cobblestone or brick streets.

3

It’s a riff on Sic transit gloria mundi (“This passes the glory of the world”), but with “Bibliopolium” (“bookstore”) substituted for “gloria”

4

🫶🏼 thank you

5

I remember when the rise of the Barnes & Nobles was decried for pushing out the local booksellers!

6

Rochester has a 50,000 sq. ft. B&N, which was supposedly the largest in the country outside New York when it opened. I can’t imagine why, but they took over a free-standing two-story department store building in a shopping plaza. Ever since it’s been busy. I keep expecting it to fail, but for some reason Rochester is a B&N city. Besides two other locations across town, two university B&Ns are located off-campus to give them easy access to non-students. (And hard for students.) No other new bookstores still exist, which cuts competition, and the huge B&N is in the same plaza as the flagship Wegman’s, possibly the most profitable supermarket in the country, so they benefit from the spillover. Location, location, location. But that doesn’t explain the two other plain vanilla mall locations that survive.

7

B&N used to operate the University of Rochester Bookstore, conveniently located on campus at Wilson Commons. The new one is out where the Americana Towne House used to be, a pretty good schlepp from campus (especially in the winter), but at least it’s bigger than the old one used to be.

As for the one near the SuperWegman’s in Pittsford, I thought that went up in a brand new building. When I lived in the Flour/Flower City there was no building in the parking lot at Pittsford where the B&N is now.

Rochester used to have a plethora of bookstores, too. Nothing like Boston, but you had Waldenbooks, several Scrantom’s, and the flagship Sibley, Lindsay, and Curr store downtown (which had a book section). Not to mention the Village Green and the Oxford Avenue Bookstore and the others alone Monroe Avenue. And several in the outlying malls, not to mention used bookstores. Now, aside from that monster B&N and the one near the University, I don’t think any of the malls have bookstores. Midtown Plaza is gone, and so is the Village Green.

8

There are only four left in Manhattan - when I used to work there in the nineties there must have been well over a dozen. The Lincoln Center store was my favorite and it’s long gone.
Out in the burbs by me north of NYC they haven’t closed any recently…

9

The Pittsford store definitely is in a vacated department store, B. Forman’s, I think. McCurdy’s was across the street from Sibley’s and had an equally good book department. Nobody today remembers that department stores prided themselves on selling top quality everything, not just clothing.

World Wide News, also downtown, had the weirdest book collection I’ve ever seen. Almost the entire back wall of the building was covered in nonfiction trade paperbacks, aimed at the academic audience. Nobody else sold them and they were just back of the dirty magazines, an indication of the clientele. I never once saw anybody browse them let alone buy one. I think they were $1.95 so way out of my price range. That wall is one of the great mysteries in life, like the restaurant that stays open despite never having customers, making you think it’s a mob front.

10

Now, Barnes & Noble is the hero to independent booksellers, since the big bad wolf now is Amazon. Here is a ten-day-old New York Times article (paywalled, but it’s a gift link) discussing that idea.

11

We had a B&N nearby, which was good in organizing activities for readers and writers, but they closed it because, I heard, of competition from the Borders a block away. Which went bust two weeks later. Now I have to go all the way to Santa Clara for one.

12

Great article! Thanks for the gift link. Seems like the new CEO is really doing some smart things. It’s still interesting to see the change in the view of B&N by indie booksellers.

Though I’m part of the problem I guess. I read a lot, but it’s all on my Kindle. Haven’t read a physical book in 5-6 years

13

Lexington, Kentucky still has a Barnes and Noble, but it’s dwarfed in size by the independent Joseph-Beth Booksellers, which operates on an expansive two floors.

14

I don’t think I’ve purchased or read a real book in ten years and when I did, I nearly always purchased used books or borrowed from a friend. Now, I gladly pay full price for books in digital format from Amazon because I find the format so convenient.

What I’ve not been able to replace with the digital format or with Amazon is the bookstore browsing experience. It’s one of my great joys to visit my local B&N and browse the titles. I don’t buy any books because I don’t want any books so I photograph my favorites and order them later from Amazon.

Yes, I feel some guilt about this, and I’d love to be able to buy a digital version of the book, at full price, from B&N if they’d only give me the option. I’ve always wondered why B&N hasn’t tried harder to capitalize on this. Why couldn’t B&N have a store with one copy of every book for display purposes only that contained a QR code for ordering digitally?

BTW, I feel the same way about music. I buy CD’s when I have to, copy them into iTunes, and throw them away.

15

I used to go there all the time, and remember that wall. Weird stuff, and I occasionally bought things from it.

16

There’s still a Barnes and Noble in Leominster. Their selection sucks.

The way things are going, I wouldn’t complain about the Harvard Coop. It’s a pretty great bookstore.

17

Who’s complaining? I get things from there all the time. They still have a decent used book section downstairs.

18

You! You were the one!

Hey, everybody, Cal launders books for the mob!

19

No, no. I only looked at the intellectual books (one book I clearly recall them having – Carl Jung’s Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth)! I was really there for the Porn!

20

Is the one on Union Square still open? I used to work nearby, and I was there just about every lunch break.