Recently I went on vacation to New York City, and of course being a book lover through and through my vacation consisted of several bookish stops! Here is a little highlight of the bookish places I went:

The Strand Bookstore

Founded in 1927, this book store is probably one of the most well known in NYC now. It boasts 18 miles of books. The store occupies three and a half floors, with another half floor for offices and one additional floor for warehouse space. According to Wiki, “as of June 2017, the store had around 2.5 million books”. My friend and I are both book lovers and so we put it on our list as a must visit! We stopped by Washington Square Park first and got caught in the rain, so we were quick to make our way to The Strand to stay dry. We didn’t get to every area of the bookstore, as I was quick to make my way up to the rare book room. While I didn’t plan on buying something, books have a way of coming home with me and I picked up a copy of Dan the Newsboy from 1893.

 New York Public Library

Of course, a must see for many tourists — the New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. It was so crowded, so we didn’t spend a great deal of time in there. We ducked into the Rose Main Reading Room and got a little lost trying to find the Winnie the Pooh stuffed animals!

The Morgan Library

When Mr. Morgan’s rare books and manuscript collection was growing beyond what he had room for he did what any wealthy man can afford to do — he built his own library (in 1903), and it’s gorgeous! By far one of my favorite places we visited. There are several notable books on display, include a Gutenberg Bible (the Morgan Library has 3!), along with some lovely embroided books. As well as books there was an exhibit on the Petite Prince including drawings done by the author, and an exhibit on signatures which had signatures from an array of famous people from the Romanov’s, Rasputin, Queen Victoria, Mozart, Beethoven, Einstein, Disney, Darwin, Hawking, the list goes on! It was very neat.

Those were the main three, but we of course stumbled upon other books else where — the Cloisters had several old books on display. And regardless of whether you like books or not I’d highly recommend going to the Cloisters! It’s absolutely gorgeous up there and away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

I am sort of kicking myself for skipping out on going to John K. King Used & Rare Books in Detroit. Both my traveling friend and a friend who I visited in Detroit on my way home offered to go see it (and both did go see it I think!), unfortunately I didn’t take the chance to see… guess I’ll just have to head back to Detroit to see it another day! I’ve been told it’s pretty awesome!

Other bookish things I missed out on was the Center for Book Arts, and going to Talas (it was a bit far from where I was staying) but that just gives me all the reason to go back again sometime! I did get to see New York’s oldest operating business under the same name: Bowne & Co. Stationers from 1775. It’s a print shop and definitely worth visiting is you love letterpress!

Of course, we saw a ton of other things but for the sake of this blog post, we’re keeping things only related to books!

That’s all for now! Until next time,