New York’s Gotham Book Mart Collection Donated to Penn Libraries
Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 1/5/2009
- Anonymous donor may have Penn connection
- Collection sold at auction in 2007; modern poetry and literature highlighted
- Library plans to inventory collection, digitize items
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The five-floor Gotham Book Mart, a legendary independent bookstore in New York City, closed in 2006, some $500,000 in arrears on its rent, and saw its contents auctioned off in 2007 in boxes no buyer had time to fully peruse. The buyer, according to the New York Times, was a lawyer for the landlord's corporation, who paid $400,000.
While the new owner planned to sell the collection—200,000 items, notably modern and contemporary poetry and literature—apparently some mix of public-spiritedness, market assessment, and tax considerations instead led to an anonymous donation to the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, which plans to produce the first-ever inventory of the collection and digitize selected items to put online.
Rich collection
The Gotham Book Mart Collection, Penn said, also encompasses art, architecture, jewelry, music, dance, theater, drama, and film. Along with first editions, books from small presses, and experimental literary magazines, the collection also includes books from the personal libraries of Truman Capote and Anais Nin, and items signed by Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Robinson Jeffers, Woody Allen, Wallace Stevens, and John Updike.
While Penn’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML) already has much pre-1850 antiquarian material, the gift will “solidify Penn's holdings in modern and contemporary American literature,” said Al Filreis, Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of Kelly Writers House, and Director of the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at Penn.
Carton Rogers, Vice Provost and Director of Libraries, said the RBML is a cornerstone of Penn Libraries' capital campaign: "We have an opportunity to include Gotham in our planning for significant renovations to the fifth and sixth floors of our main library, and to really showcase Penn's unique collections."
Delivery and donor questions
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the collection is being delivered this week from a warehouse in Connecticut. Penn officials estimate it will take about two years to take inventory and make the collection publicly available. The Inquirer suggested the collection is valued at "several million dollars;” if so, the buyer of the collection might have received a tax write-off of well more than $400,000.
The New York Times offered a hint as to the donor’s identity. Leonard Lauder, former chairman of the Estée Lauder Companies, co-bought and then leased a townhouse in midtown to Gotham owner Andreas Brown in an effort to save the bookstore. Lauder, a Penn graduate, is an emeritus member of its board of trustees. A lawyer for Lauder wouldn’t comment to the Times on Lauder’s role.
Some history
The Gotham Book Mart, founded by Frances Steloff, opened in 1920 and was home to numerous literary figures; the Times cited Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, H. L. Mencken, Arthur Miller, John Updike, J. D. Salinger, and Eugene O’Neill. Famous customers included George and Ira Gershwin, Woody Allen, Saul Bellow, John Guare, Katharine Hepburn, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Steleoff, who died in 1989, left her estate to Skidmore College and the New York Public Library.
One commenter on the Times’s web site wrote, “There never was a bookstore like the Gotham or ever shall be. It was totally unique and it gave many of us the opportunity to purchase wonderful signed books like the Edward Gorey signed editions that we would not otherwise have had access to.”
LJ Social Sciences Editor Margaret Heilbrun, who worked at Gotham after college, reflected in 2007 in a blog post: “The store's golden age had passed by the time of my employment, yet there was still Tennessee Williams coming by, looking like a pharmacist in his diagonally buttoned shirts…. The store, day-to-day, was run by Phil Lyman, truly a character out of Henry James.”
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