Wednesday, March 29, 1995
Tales of the Bookseller's Row - Miss Adelaide de Groot 3/29/95
The Museum of Modern Art has always been a fascinating place, for the acquantanceships one could make. Whom am I kidding - it was a good place to meet girls: students with notebooks, hip women who might respond to a "Did you know that night fishing at Antibes is a totally nonexistent sport?" with a:" who told you that, Gertrude Stein?" and some really grand people.
I was sitting, reading, near the birch trees in the garden, near the closing time in June, in the 1960s, when the elderly gentlewoman next to me asked me for an insignificant favor. Only after she struck up a conversation did I realize that I was being picked up. It was not a pickup type of pickup; as it transpired, she needed someone to walk with her to her house up North, off 5th Avenue, and I was the nearest trustworthy-looking male.
Having been gently solicited, I agreed. It was only then that the lady gave me her full name, and I was stunned. It was Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot, a famous collector of the French Impressionists, whose name was on numerous acknowledgemets of loan exhibits at the MOMA and the Met. My interest was pricked: would I be invited to see some momentous masterpieces in a museum-like residence? It did not seem likely; the lady stopped at the Tripler's window to express gentle disapproval of the prices of neckties, her nephew's birthday was coming up, and she was shopping for gifts.
I had told her that I knew of her collection, and after some back-and-forth she revealed that the paintings were in storage. She could not afford the insurance, and her premises were not sufficiently watched. It was truly sad; she spoke lovingly of the paintings, she would adore to see them once more entering and leaving the house. For the past years she had seen them only in reproductions and old museum catalogues.
That was sad - the old gentlewoman, no progeny, no close people, and no art to warm her spirits. I invited her to have a bite on East 52nd Street, a nice restaurant that I could scarcely afford, and she declined, it was out of her way. I have a suspicion that she had a hot plate at home, and some spaghetti and sauce.
Miss de Groot and I met a very few times at the MOMA afterwards; then I became a husband and left the Bohemian drift, acquiring a more purpose-full lifestyle. It was only years later that the news came through that Miss Adelaide had passed away and left her Impressionists to the finest repository in the land, the great Metropo;itan Museum, in care of its Director, the charming and innovative Thomas Hov ning. Then, in future years , came the story.
It seems that Miss de Groot's collection of magnificent French Impressionists was duplicating the Met's own, and could be safely deaccessioned, that is, exchanged and sold in the collector market. Since the gift was without reservations (a warning to you, my wealthy collector readers), the paintings could be moved out into the open market, quietly. Mr Hoving came in for some criticism.
I was sitting, reading, near the birch trees in the garden, near the closing time in June, in the 1960s, when the elderly gentlewoman next to me asked me for an insignificant favor. Only after she struck up a conversation did I realize that I was being picked up. It was not a pickup type of pickup; as it transpired, she needed someone to walk with her to her house up North, off 5th Avenue, and I was the nearest trustworthy-looking male.
Having been gently solicited, I agreed. It was only then that the lady gave me her full name, and I was stunned. It was Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot, a famous collector of the French Impressionists, whose name was on numerous acknowledgemets of loan exhibits at the MOMA and the Met. My interest was pricked: would I be invited to see some momentous masterpieces in a museum-like residence? It did not seem likely; the lady stopped at the Tripler's window to express gentle disapproval of the prices of neckties, her nephew's birthday was coming up, and she was shopping for gifts.
I had told her that I knew of her collection, and after some back-and-forth she revealed that the paintings were in storage. She could not afford the insurance, and her premises were not sufficiently watched. It was truly sad; she spoke lovingly of the paintings, she would adore to see them once more entering and leaving the house. For the past years she had seen them only in reproductions and old museum catalogues.
That was sad - the old gentlewoman, no progeny, no close people, and no art to warm her spirits. I invited her to have a bite on East 52nd Street, a nice restaurant that I could scarcely afford, and she declined, it was out of her way. I have a suspicion that she had a hot plate at home, and some spaghetti and sauce.
Miss de Groot and I met a very few times at the MOMA afterwards; then I became a husband and left the Bohemian drift, acquiring a more purpose-full lifestyle. It was only years later that the news came through that Miss Adelaide had passed away and left her Impressionists to the finest repository in the land, the great Metropo;itan Museum, in care of its Director, the charming and innovative Thomas Hov ning. Then, in future years , came the story.
It seems that Miss de Groot's collection of magnificent French Impressionists was duplicating the Met's own, and could be safely deaccessioned, that is, exchanged and sold in the collector market. Since the gift was without reservations (a warning to you, my wealthy collector readers), the paintings could be moved out into the open market, quietly. Mr Hoving came in for some criticism.
Letting Off Steam 3/24/95
He who calls the tune, pays the piper, there's no free lunch, and you must put your money where your mouth is. Unfortunately, often in public life it is someone else who pays the piper, etcetera.
These thoughts crossed my mind while reading some recent news items. These remarks are not very focused, but they have to do with my general thesis of responsibility. Irresponsible criticism must pay for its mistakes. Responsible criticism must include potential solutions.
First item, the one about Yale University having to refund $20 Million to a donor.
Four years after giving this sum to Yale, to expand its Western civilization curriculum, and after extensive negotiations about its implementation to satisfy the requirements of the faculty multiculturalists, the donor, Lee M. Bass, got tired of the runaround and asked for a say in the hiring of the teachers. When that was not granted, he requested a refund. Yale has agreed to repay, even though some of the money is already spent, and the school has a $12 Million deficit. A Prof. of comparative lit, Michael Holquist, states that: "I think Mr. Bass made a great mistake. I think that the possibility for a creative and innovative program...for new ways to negotiate Western heritage has been lost." He reminds me of the statements of the negotiators of the baseball strike. Nothing was said about whether the multiculturalists made a mistake. Holquist further states that he had always held out hope that a compromise curriculum could have been designed. Nothing indicates how his people contributed to the working out of the program in the four years. Nothing indicates that the protesters are raising a fund to help defray the loss.
On the same page, John L. Loeb is giving Harvard $70.5 Million in directed funds, for population issues, preventive medicine, advanced environmentl studies, and a "humanist chaplaincy" at the Memorial Church, as well as general teaching and financial aid support. No funds to expand the Western civilization curriculun, hence no protest. While New York Times saw fit to write a sanctimonious editorial about the Bass gift, they saw naothing objectionable in the Loeb conditions.
Next story. SUNY trustees have announced that they will close eight of the SUNY 34 campuses and raise tuition by $1,600 a year, to $6,250, to meet the Governor Georce E. Pataki's proposed 31.5 percent budget cuts of $290 Million, out of a total budget of $1.5 Billion. The Chair of SUNY, Frederic V. Salerno, forecasts that this action would cause a drop of 20,000 in the 159,000 student body.The Gov and Speaker Bruno have responded by offering to get rid of the trustees, for using scare tactics. This is an issue that would hurt the Governor politially, since most of the SUNY campuses are in upstate Republican areas, and provide employment.
Speaking from personal albeit anecdotal knowledge, the SUNY campuses, which were expanded to accomodate the baby boom, have been underutilized for years. This is a classic case of duplication of facilities and administrative overheads. To justify their existence, some community colleges have been recruiting prisoners in local jails and welfare recipients, offering them free tuition and transportation to attend classes, without having to meet performance requirements. The courses offered to this group of students have not been specifically geared to teaching trades and skills that would facilitate the students' return to mainstream. Thus, much waste. Consolidation of SUNY facilities is indicated. As to the Governor's gee-whiz reaction, it would be inconceivable that he expected the 31.5 percent budget cut to go through without some college closings.
I find the Governor's attitude particularly galling because in January he endorsed the Gingrich balanced budget amendment, full well knowing that New York would lose huge Federal subsidies, should the amendment take effect. Our New York State sends Washington about $14 billion more a year than it gets back as is. Under the amendment the state would lose $11.2 billion in annual aid by the year 2002, and would have to raise taxes by 24 percent to make up for the loss. This was calculated by the Democratic Governor Howard Dean of Vermont. The Dean numbers were disputed as hypothetical by Governor Pataki, who has promised not only to reduce taxes by 25 percent but also not to mandate expenses down to the local level. If reducing the state support for schools, Medicaid, hospitals and home nursing aid does not mandate expenses down to local levels, I don't know what does. Who's kidding whom! Already the demonstrators are gathering - Al Sharpton's army has marched to Albany, school kids are walking to New York City Hall, and there will be more. Jesse Jackson has started talking in street language, and my paranoia foresees a hot summer of potential riots, the kind that came right after the Civil Rights acts were passed in 1965, that forced the brave President Johnson turn tail and pass the Great Society laws, precipitating the welfare mess that we are in today. If the Contract With America goes through as announced, the riots will not be far behind. But maybe that is what the Right wing envisioned all along - cause riots that precipitates suspension of government and a Pat Robertson dictatorship.
Paying the Piper
He who calls the tune, pays the piper, there's no free lunch, and you must put your money where your mouth is. Unfortunately, often in public life it is someone else who pays the piper, etcetera.
These thoughts crossed my mind while reading some recent news items. These remarks are not very focused, but they have to do with my general thesis of responsibility. Irresponsible criticism must pay for its mistakes. Responsible criticism must include potential solutions.
First item, the one about Yale University having to refund $10 Million to a donor.
Four years after giving $20 Million to Yale, to expand its Western civilization curriculum, and after extensive negotiations about its implementation to satisfy the requirements of the faculty multiculturalists, the donor, Lee M Bass, got tired of the runaraound and has requested a refund. Yale has agreed, even though it has spent some of the money, and has a $12 Million deficit. A Prof. of comparative lit, Michael Holquist, states that: "I think Mr. Bass made a great mistake. I think that the possibility for a creative and innovative program...for new ways to negotiate Western heritage has been lost." He reminds me of the statements of the negotiators of the baseball strike. Nothing was said about whether the multiculturalists made a mistake. Holquist further states that he had always held out hope that a compromise curriculum could have been designed. Nothing in the article shows whether his people contributed to the working out of the problem in the four years, or essentially contributed to protest. Nothing in the article indicates that the protesters are raising a fund, or taking a cut in pay, to help defray the loss.
On the same page, John L. Loeb is giving Harvard $70.5 Million in directed funds, for population issues, preventive medicine, advanced environmentl studies, and a "humanist chaplaincy" at the Memorial Church, as well as general teaching and financial aid support. No funds to expand the Western civilization curriculun, hence no protest.
Next story. SUNY trustees have announced that they will close eight of the SUNY 34 campuses and raise tuition by $1,600 a year, to $6,250, to meet the Governor Georce E. Pataki's proposed 31.5 percent budget cuts of $290 Million, out of a total budget of $1.5 Billion. The Chair of SUNY, Frederic V. Salerno, forecasts that this action would cause a drop of 20,000 in the 159,000 student body.The Gov and Speaker Bruno have reponded by offering to get rid of the trustees, for using scare tactics. This is an issue that would hurt the Governor politially, since most of the SUNY campuses are in upstate Republican areas, and provide employment.
Speaking from personal albeit anecdotal knowledge, the SUNY campuses, which were expanded to accomodate the baby boom, have been underutilized for years. This is a classic case of duplication of facilities and administrative overheads. To justify their existence, some community colleges have been recruiting prisoners in local jails and welfare recipients, offering them free tuition and transportation to attend classes, without having to meet performance requirements. The courses offered to this group of students have not been specifically geared to teaching trades and skills that would facilitate the students' return to mainstream. Thus, much waste. Consolidation of SUNY facilities is indicated. As to the Governor's disingenuous reaction, it would be inconceivable that he expected the 31.5 percent budget cut to go through without some closings.
Another story. The Congressional axe aimed at the National Endowment for the Arts has its origin in such NEA-sponsored shows as the Richard Serrano sculpture, featuring Christ in urine, Karen Finley's image-mutilating self-exhibit, and Maplethorpe's homosexual/sadistic photographic fantasies. These anarchistic shows in themselves are part of our 1st Amendment rights; were they denied, we would be the less for it?
These thoughts crossed my mind while reading some recent news items. These remarks are not very focused, but they have to do with my general thesis of responsibility. Irresponsible criticism must pay for its mistakes. Responsible criticism must include potential solutions.
First item, the one about Yale University having to refund $20 Million to a donor.
Four years after giving this sum to Yale, to expand its Western civilization curriculum, and after extensive negotiations about its implementation to satisfy the requirements of the faculty multiculturalists, the donor, Lee M. Bass, got tired of the runaround and asked for a say in the hiring of the teachers. When that was not granted, he requested a refund. Yale has agreed to repay, even though some of the money is already spent, and the school has a $12 Million deficit. A Prof. of comparative lit, Michael Holquist, states that: "I think Mr. Bass made a great mistake. I think that the possibility for a creative and innovative program...for new ways to negotiate Western heritage has been lost." He reminds me of the statements of the negotiators of the baseball strike. Nothing was said about whether the multiculturalists made a mistake. Holquist further states that he had always held out hope that a compromise curriculum could have been designed. Nothing indicates how his people contributed to the working out of the program in the four years. Nothing indicates that the protesters are raising a fund to help defray the loss.
On the same page, John L. Loeb is giving Harvard $70.5 Million in directed funds, for population issues, preventive medicine, advanced environmentl studies, and a "humanist chaplaincy" at the Memorial Church, as well as general teaching and financial aid support. No funds to expand the Western civilization curriculun, hence no protest. While New York Times saw fit to write a sanctimonious editorial about the Bass gift, they saw naothing objectionable in the Loeb conditions.
Next story. SUNY trustees have announced that they will close eight of the SUNY 34 campuses and raise tuition by $1,600 a year, to $6,250, to meet the Governor Georce E. Pataki's proposed 31.5 percent budget cuts of $290 Million, out of a total budget of $1.5 Billion. The Chair of SUNY, Frederic V. Salerno, forecasts that this action would cause a drop of 20,000 in the 159,000 student body.The Gov and Speaker Bruno have responded by offering to get rid of the trustees, for using scare tactics. This is an issue that would hurt the Governor politially, since most of the SUNY campuses are in upstate Republican areas, and provide employment.
Speaking from personal albeit anecdotal knowledge, the SUNY campuses, which were expanded to accomodate the baby boom, have been underutilized for years. This is a classic case of duplication of facilities and administrative overheads. To justify their existence, some community colleges have been recruiting prisoners in local jails and welfare recipients, offering them free tuition and transportation to attend classes, without having to meet performance requirements. The courses offered to this group of students have not been specifically geared to teaching trades and skills that would facilitate the students' return to mainstream. Thus, much waste. Consolidation of SUNY facilities is indicated. As to the Governor's gee-whiz reaction, it would be inconceivable that he expected the 31.5 percent budget cut to go through without some college closings.
I find the Governor's attitude particularly galling because in January he endorsed the Gingrich balanced budget amendment, full well knowing that New York would lose huge Federal subsidies, should the amendment take effect. Our New York State sends Washington about $14 billion more a year than it gets back as is. Under the amendment the state would lose $11.2 billion in annual aid by the year 2002, and would have to raise taxes by 24 percent to make up for the loss. This was calculated by the Democratic Governor Howard Dean of Vermont. The Dean numbers were disputed as hypothetical by Governor Pataki, who has promised not only to reduce taxes by 25 percent but also not to mandate expenses down to the local level. If reducing the state support for schools, Medicaid, hospitals and home nursing aid does not mandate expenses down to local levels, I don't know what does. Who's kidding whom! Already the demonstrators are gathering - Al Sharpton's army has marched to Albany, school kids are walking to New York City Hall, and there will be more. Jesse Jackson has started talking in street language, and my paranoia foresees a hot summer of potential riots, the kind that came right after the Civil Rights acts were passed in 1965, that forced the brave President Johnson turn tail and pass the Great Society laws, precipitating the welfare mess that we are in today. If the Contract With America goes through as announced, the riots will not be far behind. But maybe that is what the Right wing envisioned all along - cause riots that precipitates suspension of government and a Pat Robertson dictatorship.
Paying the Piper
He who calls the tune, pays the piper, there's no free lunch, and you must put your money where your mouth is. Unfortunately, often in public life it is someone else who pays the piper, etcetera.
These thoughts crossed my mind while reading some recent news items. These remarks are not very focused, but they have to do with my general thesis of responsibility. Irresponsible criticism must pay for its mistakes. Responsible criticism must include potential solutions.
First item, the one about Yale University having to refund $10 Million to a donor.
Four years after giving $20 Million to Yale, to expand its Western civilization curriculum, and after extensive negotiations about its implementation to satisfy the requirements of the faculty multiculturalists, the donor, Lee M Bass, got tired of the runaraound and has requested a refund. Yale has agreed, even though it has spent some of the money, and has a $12 Million deficit. A Prof. of comparative lit, Michael Holquist, states that: "I think Mr. Bass made a great mistake. I think that the possibility for a creative and innovative program...for new ways to negotiate Western heritage has been lost." He reminds me of the statements of the negotiators of the baseball strike. Nothing was said about whether the multiculturalists made a mistake. Holquist further states that he had always held out hope that a compromise curriculum could have been designed. Nothing in the article shows whether his people contributed to the working out of the problem in the four years, or essentially contributed to protest. Nothing in the article indicates that the protesters are raising a fund, or taking a cut in pay, to help defray the loss.
On the same page, John L. Loeb is giving Harvard $70.5 Million in directed funds, for population issues, preventive medicine, advanced environmentl studies, and a "humanist chaplaincy" at the Memorial Church, as well as general teaching and financial aid support. No funds to expand the Western civilization curriculun, hence no protest.
Next story. SUNY trustees have announced that they will close eight of the SUNY 34 campuses and raise tuition by $1,600 a year, to $6,250, to meet the Governor Georce E. Pataki's proposed 31.5 percent budget cuts of $290 Million, out of a total budget of $1.5 Billion. The Chair of SUNY, Frederic V. Salerno, forecasts that this action would cause a drop of 20,000 in the 159,000 student body.The Gov and Speaker Bruno have reponded by offering to get rid of the trustees, for using scare tactics. This is an issue that would hurt the Governor politially, since most of the SUNY campuses are in upstate Republican areas, and provide employment.
Speaking from personal albeit anecdotal knowledge, the SUNY campuses, which were expanded to accomodate the baby boom, have been underutilized for years. This is a classic case of duplication of facilities and administrative overheads. To justify their existence, some community colleges have been recruiting prisoners in local jails and welfare recipients, offering them free tuition and transportation to attend classes, without having to meet performance requirements. The courses offered to this group of students have not been specifically geared to teaching trades and skills that would facilitate the students' return to mainstream. Thus, much waste. Consolidation of SUNY facilities is indicated. As to the Governor's disingenuous reaction, it would be inconceivable that he expected the 31.5 percent budget cut to go through without some closings.
Another story. The Congressional axe aimed at the National Endowment for the Arts has its origin in such NEA-sponsored shows as the Richard Serrano sculpture, featuring Christ in urine, Karen Finley's image-mutilating self-exhibit, and Maplethorpe's homosexual/sadistic photographic fantasies. These anarchistic shows in themselves are part of our 1st Amendment rights; were they denied, we would be the less for it?
Monday, March 20, 1995
Tales of the Booksellers' Row, Part I 3/20/1995
LOOKING BACK by Wally Dobelis
The other day, walking on 9th St., East of 4th Ave, across from Cooper Union, I was thunderstruck to see that Pageant Bookstore had disappeared from the face of the earth. I don't know why I should have been - rising real estate values have driven out all of the 20-odd antiquarian booksellers who flourished in the early 1950s in our area, mostly along the 4th Ave Boooksellers' Row, south of 14th Street. Pageant was the one which stubbornly clung to the territory, moving only around the corner from 59 Fourth Ave, where Sid Solomon and Chip Chafetz had originally held sway in a unique operation. They purchased, at auctions, damaged copies of incunabula (books printed before 1500 AD) and other typographical rarities, tore them up and sold them page by page for framing. Ditto pages of missals on vellum, maps and picture books. I still have somewhere pages of the Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicles (1493-97), a particularly beautifully printed and woodcut-illustrated folio, of which Sid and Chip must have chopped up a dozen copies.
The partners cleverly recognized that there was a living in reprinting out-of-print scholarly books in limited but steady demand by college libraries. New colleges were springing up to accomodate the baby-boom generation. They studied want lists of titles and generated a compendium of books worth reprinting, as soon as they would be out of copyright (many of them were already). That was in the days when publishers did not guard their back-lists. The boys formed Cooper Square Publishers, and their bibliography series editor for a while was Dr. S.R.Shapiro, a scholar of firm opinions, who once tried to buck the venerable American Book-Prices Current, auction price publishers, by issuing a mammoth rival, showing all books sold in auction for more than $3, of which I have the one 5-year volume (1940-45) that was published.
Up the block from Pageant, at 57, was Biblo and Tannen, who specialized in fiction and also had a major scholarly and Edgar Rice Burroughs reprint series publishing house, Canaveral Books. I remember my wife's aunt, who lived on limited funds, once discovered that B&T had reprinted one of her late husband's Dr. Max Hamburger's books on Aristotelian philosophy. She called them, and Alice, the office manager, thereafter faithfully sent her minor royalty checks. She had less luck with the other American and German publishers who reprinted Uncle Max's works.
On the next block, between 10th and 11th Sts, was Ben Bass' Strand Bookstore, a smallish room. Ben and his son Fred really had to be brave to move, late in 1963, to the cavernous sales room and basement that they presently occupy at corner Broadway and 12th. But it worked, and they now have more floors, more workers (160) and more books (2 1/2 Million) than all the members of 4th Ave Booksellers Association combined had in their heyday. It is also one of the two NYC bookstores with a 3rd generation member of the founding family on staff.
The other one is Samuel Weiser's Occult Books, now on East 24th St. near Lexington Ave., once one of the 4th Ave. mainstays. Their space on 4th near 14th St. was tiny, and the dapper Sam, never seen without a small cigar between his lips, bought heavily, so books had to be turned over fast, and many an 18th Century calfskin volume of Addison and Steele's essays as well as older French and German books ended on the 35c stand outside, bookscouts' favorite hunting grounds. Someplace I have a small disbound German woodcut book of saints, with a rhyme for each, which I think could be an incunabulum, bought for 35c from Weiser's. But that purchase was around 1952.
The construction of an apartment house forced Sam to move to a huge, main floor and mezzanine store on Broadway between 13th and 14th Sts, with a basement from which his son Donald conducted their Occult book reprint and catalog business. The store stayed open late, and it was there that we after-work book afficionados gathered to shoot the breeze and exchange book arcana with Sam's brother Ben. It was there that I lost a nice "sleeper" - a thin appreciation of Ezra Pound (N.Y., 1918), written anonymosly, which I knew to be the second published book of T.S.Eliot's. I had left it by the cash register, and it was gone. I fussed no end, and one of the regulars, Bruce, an older man, commiserated with me, and helped me look. Bruce had once lost consciousness, due to anemia, while browsing in the Americana section on the Mezzanine, and greeted Ben downstairs the next morning. A year later Robert Wilson of the Phoenix Bookshop on Cornelia Street published a letter in a trade publication, The Antiquarian Bookman, about a knowledgable thief of first editions, and the description fitted Bruce, who had meanwhile disappeared. This explained my Eliot, and certain losses that Ben had experienced. But that was not the last of Bruce, as you will read in another installment.
The Booksellers Row was a wonderful institution, a bazaar, a school in book lore. Bookdealing attracts a lot of offbeat people, ranging from savants to hucksters. I came to the world of books as a youngster, and stayed close to it, but not as a real part of it, for many years. Tales abound of H. P. Kraus and A.S.W.Rosenbach buying expensive books from impoverished European monasteries and noblemen and reselling them to rich collectors. That is not the environment of the collectors, book scouts and rascals I'll write about. My peers were there for the thrill of arcane knowledge, discovery and possession; to match wits with the pros, and to make incidental gains when they could bear to part with some minor rarity. But the romance! Consider accidentally discovering in a thrift shop a copy of the anonymously printed Tamerlane and Other Poems by a Bostonian (1837), Edgar Allan Poe's first book, and paying off the mortgage with the proceeds from selling it! By the way, beware, Tamerlane has been reprinted in exact facsimile, and copies found today are from that source.
Wally Dobelis adds that the Pageant, run by Sid Solomon's daughter Shirley, has moved its pages of incunabula to 110 East Houston St.
The other day, walking on 9th St., East of 4th Ave, across from Cooper Union, I was thunderstruck to see that Pageant Bookstore had disappeared from the face of the earth. I don't know why I should have been - rising real estate values have driven out all of the 20-odd antiquarian booksellers who flourished in the early 1950s in our area, mostly along the 4th Ave Boooksellers' Row, south of 14th Street. Pageant was the one which stubbornly clung to the territory, moving only around the corner from 59 Fourth Ave, where Sid Solomon and Chip Chafetz had originally held sway in a unique operation. They purchased, at auctions, damaged copies of incunabula (books printed before 1500 AD) and other typographical rarities, tore them up and sold them page by page for framing. Ditto pages of missals on vellum, maps and picture books. I still have somewhere pages of the Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicles (1493-97), a particularly beautifully printed and woodcut-illustrated folio, of which Sid and Chip must have chopped up a dozen copies.
The partners cleverly recognized that there was a living in reprinting out-of-print scholarly books in limited but steady demand by college libraries. New colleges were springing up to accomodate the baby-boom generation. They studied want lists of titles and generated a compendium of books worth reprinting, as soon as they would be out of copyright (many of them were already). That was in the days when publishers did not guard their back-lists. The boys formed Cooper Square Publishers, and their bibliography series editor for a while was Dr. S.R.Shapiro, a scholar of firm opinions, who once tried to buck the venerable American Book-Prices Current, auction price publishers, by issuing a mammoth rival, showing all books sold in auction for more than $3, of which I have the one 5-year volume (1940-45) that was published.
Up the block from Pageant, at 57, was Biblo and Tannen, who specialized in fiction and also had a major scholarly and Edgar Rice Burroughs reprint series publishing house, Canaveral Books. I remember my wife's aunt, who lived on limited funds, once discovered that B&T had reprinted one of her late husband's Dr. Max Hamburger's books on Aristotelian philosophy. She called them, and Alice, the office manager, thereafter faithfully sent her minor royalty checks. She had less luck with the other American and German publishers who reprinted Uncle Max's works.
On the next block, between 10th and 11th Sts, was Ben Bass' Strand Bookstore, a smallish room. Ben and his son Fred really had to be brave to move, late in 1963, to the cavernous sales room and basement that they presently occupy at corner Broadway and 12th. But it worked, and they now have more floors, more workers (160) and more books (2 1/2 Million) than all the members of 4th Ave Booksellers Association combined had in their heyday. It is also one of the two NYC bookstores with a 3rd generation member of the founding family on staff.
The other one is Samuel Weiser's Occult Books, now on East 24th St. near Lexington Ave., once one of the 4th Ave. mainstays. Their space on 4th near 14th St. was tiny, and the dapper Sam, never seen without a small cigar between his lips, bought heavily, so books had to be turned over fast, and many an 18th Century calfskin volume of Addison and Steele's essays as well as older French and German books ended on the 35c stand outside, bookscouts' favorite hunting grounds. Someplace I have a small disbound German woodcut book of saints, with a rhyme for each, which I think could be an incunabulum, bought for 35c from Weiser's. But that purchase was around 1952.
The construction of an apartment house forced Sam to move to a huge, main floor and mezzanine store on Broadway between 13th and 14th Sts, with a basement from which his son Donald conducted their Occult book reprint and catalog business. The store stayed open late, and it was there that we after-work book afficionados gathered to shoot the breeze and exchange book arcana with Sam's brother Ben. It was there that I lost a nice "sleeper" - a thin appreciation of Ezra Pound (N.Y., 1918), written anonymosly, which I knew to be the second published book of T.S.Eliot's. I had left it by the cash register, and it was gone. I fussed no end, and one of the regulars, Bruce, an older man, commiserated with me, and helped me look. Bruce had once lost consciousness, due to anemia, while browsing in the Americana section on the Mezzanine, and greeted Ben downstairs the next morning. A year later Robert Wilson of the Phoenix Bookshop on Cornelia Street published a letter in a trade publication, The Antiquarian Bookman, about a knowledgable thief of first editions, and the description fitted Bruce, who had meanwhile disappeared. This explained my Eliot, and certain losses that Ben had experienced. But that was not the last of Bruce, as you will read in another installment.
The Booksellers Row was a wonderful institution, a bazaar, a school in book lore. Bookdealing attracts a lot of offbeat people, ranging from savants to hucksters. I came to the world of books as a youngster, and stayed close to it, but not as a real part of it, for many years. Tales abound of H. P. Kraus and A.S.W.Rosenbach buying expensive books from impoverished European monasteries and noblemen and reselling them to rich collectors. That is not the environment of the collectors, book scouts and rascals I'll write about. My peers were there for the thrill of arcane knowledge, discovery and possession; to match wits with the pros, and to make incidental gains when they could bear to part with some minor rarity. But the romance! Consider accidentally discovering in a thrift shop a copy of the anonymously printed Tamerlane and Other Poems by a Bostonian (1837), Edgar Allan Poe's first book, and paying off the mortgage with the proceeds from selling it! By the way, beware, Tamerlane has been reprinted in exact facsimile, and copies found today are from that source.
Wally Dobelis adds that the Pageant, run by Sid Solomon's daughter Shirley, has moved its pages of incunabula to 110 East Houston St.
