There’s another new biographical book about the Lovecraft Circle in New York, hot on the heels of my biographical book on Everett McNeil. So Many Lovely Days
By August 1925 the shop operated for about four months from Kirk’s rooms at 317 West 14th Street in Manhattan (the inspiration for the setting of Lovecraft’s “Cool Air”). Kirk also sold book by printed catalogue. Then the shop moved to retail premises at 365 West 15th Street. In late January 1927 Kirk took out a new shop lease at 58 West Eighth Street (“the south side of Eighth Street near Sixth Avenue”) where…
“He [Kirk] had a circulating library, mainly, but he was also interested in first editions and remainders. His shop [at 58 West Eighth] was taken over by somebody who could pay four times as much rent — that was in the days just when Eighth Street was starting to boom — either Marboro [Marlboro cigarettes?] or some other kind of shop took over his place and paid some fantastic rent, which he could not possibly touch. So he had to go out of business. And it was just at that time when I put my brother into the [book] auction business, and George became his partner.” (from New York City Bookshops in the 1930s and 1940s: The Recollections of Walter Goldwater).
Samuel Loveman of the Lovecraft circle wrote two poems “For the Chelsea Book-Shop” of which this is one…
[ Hat-tip: Hippocampus, and The Tippler for the picture. ]
Interesting recollection of the Chelsea Book Shop in the late 1930s, in this transcript of government hearings in 1953 …
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CPRT-107SPRT83870/html/CPRT-107SPRT83870.htm
“Julien Bryan in person presents “Russia Reborn,” 10,000 feet of new motion pictures of the Soviet Union as it is now. [Stalinist propaganda movie, masking genocide and mass terror, released 1933] Last public appearance in New York this season. Auspices: New Masses. Seats on sale at New Masses, Chelsea Book Shop, and Workers Book Shop.
Of course, the Chelsea Book Shop and the Workers Book Shop were the two official book shops of the Communist party of the United States.”
Hi –
I read this post with interest having stumbled upon it while looking for photographs of old New York City for some personal work I am doing. While the wonderful photo you have here certainly does give a nice flavor of city life in the City in the early 1900s, it is not, unfortunately, anywhere near West 15th street, but rather the corner of 27th Street and Fifth Avenue, the site of the present Brunswick Building (225 Fifth Ave) and was taken just before it’s construction in 1903 (as indicated by the signage both above the entrance to 225 and on the top of the building). Construction was completed in 1907. Trow’s General Directory for 1903 list the tailor ‘G. A. RECHLIN’ at 229 Fifth Avenue, corresponding to the picture on the door below the sign. The tailor FULLENCAMP, oddly enough, is listed at 237 Fifth Avenue – at the other end of the block.
I don’t mean for this to take anything away from your post and, as I say, it is a great photo evocative of a lovely period of the City’s history, but I thought you and your readers might want to know where it really is from.