{"id":258,"date":"2017-03-03T00:39:08","date_gmt":"2017-03-03T00:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johnpetrovato.com\/?p=258"},"modified":"2017-03-03T00:39:08","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T00:39:08","slug":"as-schoenhofs-shutters-a-look-at-the-squares-independent-bookstores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.johnpetrovato.com\/?p=258","title":{"rendered":"As Schoenhof\u2019s Shutters, a Look at the Square\u2019s Independent Bookstores"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"region region-content\">\n<div id=\"block-system-main\" class=\"block block-system\">\n<div class=\"content\">\n<article class=\"node-full \">\n<h1>As Schoenhof\u2019s Shutters, a Look at the Square\u2019s Independent Bookstores<\/h1>\n<p class=\"byline\">by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/harvardmagazine.com\/profile\/Oset-Bab%C3%BCr\">OSET BAB\u00dcR<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"date\">2.28.17<\/p>\n<div id=\"main-image\">\n<div class=\"field field-name-field-image field-type-image field-label-hidden\">\n<div id=\"21880\" class=\"field-item even\"><a class=\"fancybox\" href=\"http:\/\/harvardmagazine.com\/2017\/02\/schoenhofs-closes-in-harvard-square#21880\" rel=\"gallerytop\" data-fancybox-group=\"gallerytop\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/harvardmagazine.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/4x3_main\/public\/img\/article\/0217\/HarvardSquare.jpg?itok=rhzxr7yz\" alt=\"\" width=\"632\" height=\"474\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"credit\">Photograph by Chensiyuan\/Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"icons\"><a class=\"desktop\" href=\"http:\/\/harvardmagazine.com\/print\/55838?page=all\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/harvardmagazine.com\/sites\/all\/themes\/hmd7\/images\/share_Print.png\" width=\"34\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"field field-name-field-share-buttons field-type-addthis field-label-hidden\"><\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<div class=\"desktop\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden\">\n<div class=\"field-items\">\n<div class=\"field-item even\">\n<p><span class=\"firstwords\">ON MARCH 25,<\/span>\u00a0Harvard Square will bid a final farewell to Schoenhof\u2019s Foreign Books. The 150-year-old bookstore currently lives on Mount Auburn Street, and rents its basement storefront from the Spee Club. Daniel Eastman, director of sales and marketing, told\u00a0<em>The Boston Globe<\/em>\u00a0that the club \u201chas been really kind with us. This should have happened three years ago, but they tried really hard to find some way to help us stay.\u201d The demise of Schoenhof\u2019s, the largest brick-and-mortar retailer of foreign-language books in North America, is more than just a blow to wistful world travelers and language learners; it\u2019s a loss for the Harvard community, which similarly lost The Globe Corner Book Store, one of the largest map and travel-book retailers in the country, to untenable rent increases in 2011.<\/p>\n<p>In the final weeks of Schoenhof\u2019s physical presence in the Square, other local independent booksellers face mounting rent prices, a shift in book-buyers\u2019 purchasing behavior, and, most notably, tough competition from the Harvard Coop, which came under the management of corporate giant Barnes and Noble roughly two decades ago. For niche book lovers, Grolier Poetry Book Shop is an unmissable gem\u2014it boasts a collection of more than 15,000 volumes and has a history of hosting celebrated names like e.e cummings \u201915, T.S. Eliot \u201910, Litt.D. \u201947, and Marianne Moore. Ifeanyi Menkiti, who purchased the store as it was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy in 2006, says, \u201cFor us, it was all about this place and its history. It would be a shame to lose this culture. I\u2019m from Nigeria, where history and culture matter.\u201d Menkiti is professor emeritus of philosophy at Wellesley, and cites the income stability of teaching as a key reason why he and his wife felt able to take on the responsibility of running Grolier in the years it was struggling to stay afloat. \u201cIt is a labor of love,\u201d says Menkiti. He remembers recently hosting a teenager from Newton-North High School who spent hours reading and laughing while perusing the shelves of the bookstore. The sense of fulfillment derived from seeing young people continue to discover and enjoy poetry sustains Menkiti\u2019s mission to share Grolier\u2019s collections with audiences who journey from across the country or across Harvard Yard to read the volumes he has available.<\/p>\n<p>Just around the corner, Harvard Book Store offers ample reading material, both new and used, to patrons seeking a more generalist selection. Jeff Mayersohn bought the store at the end of 2008, \u201cprobably at the worst possible moment to buy a bookstore,\u201d he says, referring to the economic turmoil in the United States at the time. Yet running a bookstore was a long-running dream, and Harvard Book Store was up for sale just around the time he was ready to retire and turn to a new project. Like all independent booksellers across the country and in Harvard Square, Mayersohn admits that the rise of online retailers like Amazon has posed a serious challenge for business, but explains how he found a silver lining: \u201cPeople were lamenting the digitization of books as the end of the brick-and-mortar book store, but I saw it as a huge advantage. With the cloud, we had access to the same books that massive corporate book stores did.\u201d To this end, Harvard Book Store is home to an Espresso book machine, which offers patrons the opportunity to print books on demand, including their own works. In addition to offering print services, Harvard Book Store holds betweetn 350 and 450 author readings each year in order to drive business to the store and combat steadily rising rents. Both the Harvard Book Store and Grolier rent from the University itself, and Mayersohn says Harvard has reassured his staff of its commitment to protecting brick-and-mortar businesses in the Square.<\/p>\n<div id=\"block-inject-1\" class=\"block-inject block-inject-1\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"clearfix\"><\/div>\n<p>For John Petrovato, who has run Raven Used Books for roughly 20 years, the rent increases in Harvard Square have been something of a blessing in disguise. After Raven moved from its pricey basement location on busy JFK Street to a cheaper spot on Church Street, sales have been up and foot traffic has been higher than ever. \u201cFor what we do, the Square is the best place in the country we could be,\u201d he says. Raven\u2019s shelves of used books serve students, faculty members, and tourists looking for a brick-and-mortar shop that can match Amazon\u2019s bargain prices, a luxury that places like Schoenhof\u2019s and other new-book sellers don\u2019t have. Petrovato explains that the prohibitive cost of retail space in the Square will continue to shape the kinds of stores that open there, citing prominent real estate that has gone to corporations like CVS and Urban Outfitters instead of small businesses. \u201cWorld-class bookstores are trying to get into Harvard Square, and they just can\u2019t afford the rents. Since I\u2019ve been here, there\u2019s easily been an increase of three to four times.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps somewhat ironically, Schoenhof\u2019s will continue to serve readers\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.schoenhofs.com\/\">online<\/a>, putting a medium that played a critical role in the store\u2019s demise to good use in this next stage of the business. Its decision echoes steps considered by old\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/harvardmagazine.com\/2011\/09\/25-year-retrospective-on-harvard-square\">Harvard Square mainstays<\/a>\u00a0like WordsWorth Books, which went out of business in 2004 and similarly considered taking its business online, only to fail to do so. For the time being, the best way for the Harvard community to help local booksellers may be to spend a peaceful afternoon perusing their shelves, instead of quickly typing a title into an Internet browser.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"last\"><\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"region region-mainleft\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Schoenhof\u2019s Shutters, a Look at the Square\u2019s Independent Bookstores by\u00a0OSET BAB\u00dcR 2.28.17 Photograph by Chensiyuan\/Wikimedia Commons ON MARCH 25,\u00a0Harvard Square will bid a final farewell to Schoenhof\u2019s Foreign Books. The 150-year-old bookstore currently lives on Mount Auburn Street, and &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.johnpetrovato.com\/?p=258\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[72,3,71,65],"class_list":["post-258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-harvard-square","tag-john-petrovato","tag-raven-petrovato","tag-raven-used-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnpetrovato.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnpetrovato.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnpetrovato.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnpetrovato.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnpetrovato.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnpetrovato.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":259,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnpetrovato.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258\/revisions\/259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.johnpetrovato.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnpetrovato.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.johnpetrovato.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}