When my husband and I moved from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Springfield in 2001, we were relieved to see that, although it is a smaller city, Springfield had a number of bookstores. There was Barnes & Noble, of course, but also B. Dalton, Waldenbooks and Chapter One, a small independent shop in Fairhills Mall. In addition, there were at least two Christian bookstores, as well as Prairie Archives, the Book Rack, and the Elf Shelf, selling used books.
Twenty-three years later Barnes and Noble survives, as does Prairie Archives and the Book Rack. The status of the Elf Shelf is uncertain due to its devastation by the Adams Street fire in June. The other stores have closed and only one new one has opened, the Springfield branch of the Virden-based bookstore Books on the Square, opened in 2017.
The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss does not mention Springfield specifically, but the trends in bookstore development and decline discussed by Friss apply to Springfield as well.
Lest the reader be put off by “trends in bookstore development and decline,” let me say right away that The Bookshop is a well-written, enjoyable read, full of useful and entertaining information. Friss arranges his material in a chronological manner, beginning with the colonial era printer-booksellers, such as Benjamin Franklin. He also organizes by the many types of bookstores, and devotes sections to particular booksellers and store owners who have made major contributions to the development of bookselling, or, on occasion, been notorious personal examples.
During the antebellum era several publishers, including Ticknor and Fields in Boston, ran bookstores in connection with their publishing houses. One of these, the Old Corner bookstore, was a magnet for famous New England authors like Nathaniel Hawthorne. Oliver Wendell Holmes enjoyed “book-tasting” there (what we would call browsing). But many early bookstores were not what we would consider customer-oriented. Books were stored in piles, cupboards or cramped shelving behind counters, to which customers had no access, requiring staff assistance. By the time of the Civil War, most towns of reasonable size had a bookstore, especially in New England and along the East Coast.
Many rural and small-town locations were served by traveling booksellers of one sort or another from the 1600s well into the 20th century. Among his examples, Friss shares the account of Roger Mifflin, the bookseller from Christopher Morley’s 1917 novel Parnassus on Wheels (a lovely feel-good story that I also recommend).
The 20th century saw the rise of many different types of bookshops. Chicago’s Marshall Field’s book department, developed by Marcella Burns Hahner in the 1910s, was a model for other department stores of the era. She and her staff designed numerous themed displays to promote book sales, hosted author talks and book signings and developed the idea of the book fair in the U.S.
Independent bookstores of all sizes developed in urban areas. Among the most famous located in New York City was the Gotham Book Mart which specialized in modern and experimental literature. The Strand, still larger (and still in existence), was once associated with Book Row, a portion of Fourth Avenue between Eighth and Fourteenth Streets, filled with numerous, mainly used, bookstores that flourished from the 1910s into the 1950s.
Some bookstores had a specific ideological focus and were quite controversial. The pro-Nazi Aryan Book Store in Los Angeles opened in 1933, while Socialist, Communist or workers’ bookstores were established in various cities around the country from the early 1900s into the 1930s. In November 1967 Craig Rodwell opened the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in Greenwich Village, devoted to all things gay, which also served as an informal counseling center. Drum & Spear, an influential, Black-oriented bookstore, opened in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1968.
Although there were chain bookstores (or their ancestors) in the U.S. in the 19th century, more developed in the 1920s. None of them were very large chains, and many suffered during the Depression. It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that Waldenbooks and B. Dalton took off as mega-chains. Barnes & Noble began in 1874 and primarily sold textbooks. Although it was revamped several times, not until Leonard Riggio (who just died at the end of August) bought the company in 1971 did it begin to become the bookselling version that we are familiar with.
Unfortunately, The Bookshop also must discuss the heartbreaking declines of bookstores as well as the joys of opening new ones. Friss devotes chapters to economic issues: the devastation of independent bookstores as provoked by the chains, followed by the decimation of brick and mortar stores as a result of the convenience and price breaks of mail order companies, particularly Amazon.com, complicated by the constraints of COVID-19.
But bookstores are not dead yet and in some areas are flourishing. Springfield could be one of those places. I invite you to shop in our bookstores and to enjoy reading The Bookshop.
Springfield historian Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein worked in several bookstores as well as served as a manuscripts librarian. She is the author of four books and numerous book reviews.
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This article appears in Winter Guide 2024.
