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What, the Globe's never heard of Kenmore Square?
By adamg on Mon, 07/18/2011 - 11:43am
One of those people who read the Globe even on Saturdays noticed this story, in which the region's paper of record says the closing of the Downtown Crossing Borders would leave Boston with "only one chain bookstore in Boston: the Barnes & Noble in the Prudential Center."
Even setting aside the chains at the airport (and the Hallmark store in West Roxbury; why that one is almost in another area code, and not all Hallmarks sell books), not to mention the question of how Boston survived for several hundred years without chain bookstores, what about the mammoth Barnes & Noble store in Kenmore Square? Yeah, it sells textbooks to BU students, but it's open to the public (so, for that matter, is the smaller Emerson bookstore).
Then again, Brian McGrory cited, maybe even created, the same "exactly one major bookstore" meme a couple weeks ago.
And that, in turn, was couple weeks after another Globie claimed Harvard Square is now down to just one indie bookstore, which must have come as a surprise to Schoenhof's, the Grolier Poetry Book Shop and Raven.
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Comments
B&N
The Harvard Coop is a variety of Barnes & Noble - also the Northeastern bookstore. Both carry non-textbook reading along with the obligatory college bookstore stock, but you can't use your B&N card in either one.
Was in the DTX Borders on Sunday, scoping books I'll want to come back for during the fire sale. My daughter suggested, in less polite terms, it was like hanging out at the emergency room hoping to filch a wallet from a stiff.
Harvard Coop and B&N
The Harvard Cooperative Society still exists as a cooperative corporation with its own board of directors, but Barnes & Noble's college division now manages its book department.
That would explain why the Coop site looks like the BU one
And shows how long it's been since I've been in a Coop. Thanks, deleted the Coop reference (and added links to the three other Harvard Square stores).
Coop is dullsville
The Coop in Harvard Square is so boring now I can't bear to go into it. It's strictly for tourists, and even they are bored. In the 70s they had a record department (remember "records"?)that was incredible to behold. It was also the day of the great local independent record stores like New England Music City, Soundscope and Discount Records.
Yes
Sorry, I spoke inelegantly, I was talking only about the bookstore. Which seems to be the tail wagging the Coop dog these days. I bought my first Harris tweed and first bowtie at the old Coop, lo these centuries gone by; these days it appears to be a giant B&N with a college-logo-clothing shop appended behind.
the vultures are circling
?
What an awfully inaccurate
What an awfully inaccurate analogy. It's more like filching the pancreas.
Before there were national book chains, there were local chains
Paperback Booksmith used to be almost as ubiquitous as Brigham's Ice Cream. Today's Brookline Booksmith is all that remains of it today. Lauriat's was another prominent local bookstore chain.
When was Lauriat around
When was Lauriat around until? I have many books in my collection from pre-WWII with the little Lauriat sticker in the front cover, with an address on Washington Street (I think, I'm at work and unable to confirm). I'd be interested to learn more about that store.
Lauriat's closed in 1999
Here's an Associated Press article. They also operated some stores under the names Royal Discount and Encore Books. According to this Boston Globe article, Lauriat's started in 1872.
I remember them being on Franklin Street in downtown Boston, and in Copley Place mall. The Copley Place store was replaced by a Brentano's (really a Waldenbooks under a different name), which also closed.
1999 was an especially bad year for Boston bookstores, as Waterstone's and Rizzoli closed within weeks of Lauriat's.
Lauriat's
Lauriat's was in operation for 127 years. It started out as both a publishing house & retail establishment. About 20 years into the firm's existence Lauriat split the company with his partner, who took over the publishing wing under his own name. The last remaining stores (mostly in malls like the South Shore Plaza) closed in 1999. The flagship store was at 385 Washington St. not far from where the Downtown Crossing Barnes & Noble was. The space is now occupied by the DSW shoe store.
BN.com doesn't list Kenmore Square store
For reasons I've never understood, the Barnes & Noble Store Locator doesn't include any of its college division stores -- even huge ones like BU's in Kenmore Square. If the lazy Globe reporter depended on the BN.com website, that might explain how they overlooked this store.
According to someone above,
According to someone above, the college bookstores are now managed by a separate division of the parent company from the regular BN bookstores. There's always been some differences between the two. For example I remember one employee at the Kenmore square store telling me that they don't give out Barnes and Noble memberships
Barnes & Noble College
I've always joked that some of the college Barnes & Nobles (e.g Brandeis, Tufts, Lesley) are less like mainstream bookstores and more like sweater stores with some books in the back. Ok, not exactly true but, full disclosure, I work at a B&N College and we mostly don't carry a lot of stock in trade books because of space or various budget partitioning. These stores are on the small side compared to, say, Harvard or MIT, so that's just how it is.
However, my fellow employees and I would be more than happy to order in any book you'd like!
Funny thing is, that's what the Coop was *before* B&N
In the 1970s when I first came here, the Coop was a full-line department store with mostly clothing sold in the front building on Mass. Ave. You could even buy men's suits there. Books were in the back building across Palmer Street.
Bookstores in Logan Airport and South Station
Two of the Logan airport bookstores are Borders, so if the whole chain goes under, so do these (until Massport hurriedly negotiates a new lease with some other vendor).
South Station has a small kiosk outpost of Barbara's Bookstore, which otherwise is a local chain in Chicago.
It is a circle...
If people bought more books, there would be more bookstores. If you are buying your books online (Amazon, BN) or Ebooks for your Nook / iPad, there is less of a need for these large stores, in high rent downtown areas. The only reason Booksmith in Brookline seems to stay open is its large used section, interesting guest speakers, and the hippes who like to protest womens health centers then go buy an Ayn Rand paperback.
If people were actually buying books, instead of you people who think a bookstore is a library and it is ok to sit there and read a book for an hour with maybe the purchase of a coffee, they would not have closed. Keep that in mind next time you plunk your ass down and try to shush someone because you're too cheap or broke to buy that Stiegg Larson novel and instead choose to read it.
You guys forgot Trident on
You guys forgot Trident on Newbury as well!
It's been a long time since
It's been a long time since you could expect a Globe reporter or editor to know Boston. Those days are over. The person who wrote the article is probably from New Jersey, and there's no one on the staff to ask.
Kenmore Square? No one remembers Kenmore Square.
I think the Globe reporter can be forgiven for forgetting about the Kenmore Square Barnes and Nobles. Everyone has forgotten about Kenmore now that it is a total non-place, a void, a blankness where once there was life. That bookstore is disgusting and boring. I worked there 12 years ago and I bet it's exactly the same as it was then. No one, absolutely no one, would think to make a trip there for anything. Even I had forgotten about it. I like the Borders at DTX. It will be really too bad if it closes. Anyone else go to the closing of the one on Newbury Street? It was SO depressing and there was very little there to buy. I think they picked through the books before they put them on sale and shipped them away.
I miss the real Kenmore Square
The great old Kenmore Square of days gone by. The Rat, Pizza Pad, Nemo's. Nemo's had cockroaches crawling across the wall, but it added to the ambience of the place. I go far back enough to remember the OLD Pizza Pad with two sides, one of which had chickens on rotisseries in the window. Lucifer's disco (one of it's many names), across the street (where the bookstore is now), but none of us rock and roll people went in there. That liquor store near the Rat that seemed to be run by the same two guys for about 500 years. Now we've got that yellow styrofoam hotel and sidewalk dining. Sigh!
Lucifer's trident
I used to like how the trident remained imprinted in the side of the building long after disco died.
Don't forget Kix ...
Narsyphilis
Was "Lucifer's fill in the blank" the same building as Narcissus?
Deli Haus. Miss it greatly. Missing Pizza Pad or Nemo's is sort of like missing raging shitty beer hangovers and drinking till you puke. Yeah, there were good memories as an undergrad, but some things are best left as memories.
But yes, Kenmore Square is a non-location now.
I had a friend who worked a bit at the liquor store. I believe one of the guys was called Nat and I can't recall the other one. They had supposedly been working there for decades and supposedly delivered alcohol to Eugene O'Neill as he drank himself to death in the nearby Sheraton (now BU's Shelton Hall). Sounds like a good urban myth (those guys delivering the booze, not O'Neill's death), but I prefer to believe it. Methadone clinics, Blaine Hair School, spaghetti specials at the Rat, Mr. Butch...the skanky stuff of myths and memories. Present-day Kenmore Square has as much character as a Phoenix 7-11....or a BU student.
Lucifer == Narcissus
They changed the name at some point in the 1980s. The 'Kenmore Club' building had two other clubs called K-K-K-Katy's and Yesterday -- whose names also later changed, I forget to what. Never went into any of them, so I can't say much more of use.
Captain Nemo's moved to Jamaica Plain, where I think it's still open to this day.
Nemo's on Centre St. between Hyde Sq. and Jackson Sq.
Lipstick was the name of one of the other Kenmore Club brands, not at all sure about the third. I can't believe nobody's mentioned Charlie's yet, which was one of my all time favorite spots for late night munchies. The Kenmore of old was an amazing introduction to urban grit to me and thousands of other 18 year olds. I completely credit my love of urban space to my years in Kenmore. But now, a BU student might just as well reside at Disney World.
The day Kenmore Square changed forever
When BU got Mr. Butch kicked out.
Yes...
Lucifer's/Narcissus/Kix/K-k-katy's were all one place. I recall an article in a local music magazine in the late 70s (Sweet Potato?) called "The Battle For Kenmore Square". There had been a series of 2AM scuffles between the punk rockers at the Rat and the disco boys from Lucifer's/Narcissus. These were generally instigated by the disco people, often from the suburbs.
The old Kenmore Square, seedy as it sometimes was, was full of city culture. Now it's been replaced in the name of what? Tourism? Gentrification? Like Gertrude Stein once said, "there's no THERE there".
Wasn't Kix further down Comm. Ave.?
Where the science center is now?
Similar situation in SF
Similar situation in SF --
http://www.pcworld.com/article/235953/borders_is_t...