INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES: PAST AND PRESENT
Gotham Book Mart
(Closed Bookstores)by Farah Momin, at Dec. 18, 2011, 5:05 p.m.
Name: Gotham Book Mart
Location: POINT (-73.9779478179216738 40.7555227468809989)
Address: 16 E. 46th St., New York, NY
Date Opened: Jan. 1, 1920 (This Location: 2004)
Date Closed: 2007
Exterior:
Image Source: Photo by Jim in Times Square on Flickr. 17 Dec. 2005. http://www.flickr.com/photos/jim-in-times-square/75075430/
Additional Information: 2004 - The deal that allowed the store to move to this location, which included an option for Brown to buy the building for a little over $5.5 million, was orchestrated by developer Edmondo Schwartz and former Estée Lauder chief executive Leonard Lauder, a billionaire friend of Brown's. 2006 - Brown fell behind on his $51,000 monthly rent, and owed at least $500,000 in rent, taxes, interest and other fees. The building's owners began eviction proceedings. A judge authorized a city marshal to seize the store's inventory. May 2007 - In a court-ordered auction of the store's property, the building's landlord won the whole lot for $400,o00. Among the items included were books signed by John Updike, letters from D. H. Lawrence and Anaïs Nin, and Andy Warhol’s wig rack. Dec. 2008 - The University of Pennsylvania received a donation of 200,000 items from the Gotham Book Mart collection from an anonymous donor. The holdings were set to go to Penn’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where they are still in the process of being cataloged. Sources: Chan, Sewell. “Gotham Book Mart Holdings Are Given to Penn.” The New York Times: City Room. 2 Jan. 2009. Web. http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/02/gotham-book-mart-holdings-are-given-to-penn/.
Type of Books: New — focus on literature and art; often carried books banned elsewhere
Owner(s): Frances Steloff (1920-1967); Andreas Brown (1967-2007)
Associated Authors and/or Patrons: Tom Stoppard, Truman Capote, Anaïs Nin, Henry Miller, W.H. Auden, Christopher Morley, Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, William Burroughs, Edward Gorey, Edward Albee, Woody Allen, Saul Bellow, Charlie Chaplin, E.E. Cummings, Don DeLillo, Theodore Dreiser, Buckminster Fuller, Allen Ginsberg, George Gershwin & Ira Gershwin, Norman Mailer, H. L. Mencken, Arthur Miller, Eugene O'Neill, Ezra Pound, Man Ray, J. D. Salinger, Gertrude Stein, Dylan Thomas, John Updike, Rudolph Valentino, Gore Vidal, Andy Warhol, and Thornton Wilder
Community functions: literary and art parties, readings and signings, meetings of the James Joyce Society
The following records each have a reference pointing to this record.
- Gotham Book Mart (3rd Location) (Prior or Subsequent Locations)
by momif989, at Dec. 18, 2011, 5:46 p.m.
- Gotham Book Mart (2nd location) (Prior or Subsequent Locations)
by momif989, at Dec. 18, 2011, 6:04 p.m.
- Gotham Book Mart (1st location) (Prior or Subsequent Locations)
by momif989, at Dec. 18, 2011, 6:13 p.m.
The following arguments all reference this record.