NYC WON’T SEE ITS LIKE AGAIN

I refer to the Mendoza book store on Ann Street near City Hall. When it closed in 1990, it was NYC’s oldest book store, having opened there in 1894!

I remember the Mendoza well. It was positively Dickensian. When I was a child, my father’s office was right across Broadway and it must have been he who first brought me there. The wood floors creaked, the books sorted by topic on shelves were augmented by piles everywhere. Except for those creaks, it was usually very quiet.  If you were browsing on one of the three floors where the owner wasn’t stationed, you were kind of in your own world.

I was down around there recently and thought I’d seek it out, although I dimly remembered it had closed long ago.

The building now houses some kind of luncheonette, but at least it’s still there. But what it was and what it represented will, in all likelihood, never been seen again in this city.

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