Shakespeare & Co. to Close UWS Bookstore on West 105th St.

The independent bookstore chain Shakespeare & Co. is shuttering its West 105th Street and Broadway branch on the Upper West Side next month, only one year after opening.

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for the company told The Spirit that “our sales were not sufficient to make the store viable, despite our best efforts.”

The chain is also shrinking its footprint on the East Side of Manhattan by closing its Lexington Avenue branch, located between East 68th and East 69th streets. The two closures will leave only one outpost of the store remaining in NYC, which is also located on the Upper West Side at Broadway & West 69th Street.

A fire sale of sorts is currently being held at the closing Upper West Side store, with signs plastered on the front reading “Store Closing/Everything Must Go” & “Store Wide Sale/15% Off.” The Spirit visited the premises on March 4, revealing plenty of customer traffic, which was possibly encouraged by the plea to help offload inventory.

Shoppers appeared to be uniformly upset by the news. One customer, Marilyn Dubow, called the impending closure “absolutely heartbreaking.”

Daniela, who had stopped in with her young son, Jesse, said it was “a shame” that the store couldn’t pull in enough revenue. She speculated that there may have been some stiff competition from Book Culture, another bookstore located just up the street. Jesse chimed in to add that he “likes” Shakespeare & Co.

Edna, who was reviewing the “new books” section in the front window of the store, was aghast: “It’s another death in the neighborhood.” As she made her way into the bookstore proper, she offered up a wry quip on her support for the establishment, telling The Spirit to print that “she had went in and bought a book.”

A man hawking discount books of his own across the way—who preferred to remain anonymous in order to speak candidly—said that he wasn’t at all surprised by the news, due to the tough market. The closure wasn’t “good for the community,” he added.

Shakespeare & Co. first put down roots in NYC back in 1983, opening an outpost at West 81st Street and Broadway. It managed to survive until 1996, at one point carving its own niche in the pop culture zeitgeist by being featured in the 1989 rom-com classic When Harry Met Sally; the scene where Billy Crystal’s Harry reconnects with Meg Ryan’s Sally was filmed there.

The company jumped to the Upper East Side a few years later by opening its Lexington Avenue shop across from Hunter College. They eventually opened their West 69th Street store in 2018.

The literati may be familiar with the Parisian iterations of Shakespeare & Company. The first, founded by American expat Sylvia Beach on the city’s Left Bank in 1919, was forced to close during the Nazi occupation of France. It was a famed hangout spot for authors including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and James Joyce. Famously, the earliest edition of Joyce’s Ulysses was published there in 1922.

A second iteration of the store reopened in 1949, again on the Left Bank, under the auspices of George Whitman. It remains there today, although it shares only a name (and no other ties) with its fast-disappearing NYC counterpart.