One day earlier this year, Lisa Plumb was having lunch with her son at Incredibly Delicious and noticed the “For Sale” sign for a building directly across the street.
“I said, ‘Let’s just go look,’” Plumb says. “As soon as I walked in, I could see the vision for the bookstore.”
A few months later, on July 1, Elderberry & Plumb Bookstore opened to the public. Calling it a “dream come true,” Plumb has brought the historic building back to life with an ornately decorated bookstore on the first floor and moved the Allstate Insurance business that has been in her family for the last 40 years to the second floor.
Walk up the steps, past the pretty flowers and old-school front porch, and one enters what feels like a lived-in, authentic, Victorian-era home. Lining the shelves of four good-sized rooms are a wide selection of current fiction, non-fiction, children’s and other genres of books.
Those looking for used, hard-to-find books have other options across the city, but Plumb says the store could expand at some point to house some used books and possibly an events room or an outdoor patio. Plumb, who grew up in Buffalo, Illinois, and has worked mostly in the family insurance business, always visited bookstores in her travels across the country.
“I just love being around books,” Plumb says. “And, a good bookstore is one where you feel like it’s an experience. I had a special store that my mom and I would always go to, and she’s since passed, but whenever I go there, I feel like she’s with me. I want this store to be one where people can create memories, not just buy a book.”
Plumb and her brother, Tom Elder, own the store together, hence its name with a fruity twist. Along with books, there are many gifts and craftworks for sale. One thing the store won’t become, she says, is a coffee or bakery shop with some books thrown in.
“That’s what you can get right across the street,” Plumb said. “And we wouldn’t be able to do it better than them.”
This article appears in October 29-November 4, 2026.
