Just off a busy street less than a block from Bloomingdale’s, the Argosy Book Store is a haven for book lovers. The car noise disappears as the door closes. Inside, framed prints adorn the walls of a long main floor lined with bookshelves and ledges filled with enticing reading. Computer screens sit blinking atop a few desks, but the room has a decidedly Old World feeling, like that of a country house. Shakespeare, philosophy, and cerebral subjects offer the feeling that ideas and the printed word matter. Many of the titles exemplify Matthew Arnold’s definition of culture as the best that has been thought and said through the ages.

In Greek mythology, Jason sailed on the Argo in search of the Golden Fleece. A wooden ship with billowing sails – the shop’s eponymous symbol – hangs from Argosy’s ceiling to alert browsers that they too may find treasure. The guides for customers in search of books and prints for every interest are the three sisters who own the shop: Judith Lowry, Naomi Hample, and Adina Cohen.

Shelves marked “Select Reading” line the front left wall. There, John Dos Passos resides alongside Fyodor Dostoevsky, while I.F. Stone and Jonathan Swift sit near Strunk and White’s “Elements of Style.” Ms. Hample hand-selects these titles, describing her selections as the “un-Barnes & Noble” shelves. Ms. Hample said she wants browsers to find books of which they would say, “I’ve always meant to read that.” She also sprinkles in serendipitous surprises such as books of humor, elocution, and off the beaten track travel memoirs.

On the sidewalk outside the bookshop there is a table that features a revolving selection of books on drama, summer reading, and – the most popular topic – cooking. Over the past few weeks the table has featured old journals, auction catalogs, and pamphlets at a dollar apiece. Periodicals such as Renaissance News, Canadian Theatre Review, Commentary magazine, and Daedalus vie for space alongside scholarly pamphlets such as “Central and Local Government in Scotland Since 1707.”

Just inside the door, one can ask the elevator operator to go to the second floor, which has an abundant selection of maps and prints. The owner’s mother worked tirelessly to arrange this section of the store, starting a subsection whenever a customer would ask for prints on a particular subject.

On this floor, the myriad list of print subjects has grown to include accounting, barrels, barbers, bridges, bullfighting, canals, candles, windmills, disasters, hydraulics, cotton, birds by type, and birds by artist. The walls are decorated with colorful prints, such as one with a man balancing a chair on his chin. Long tables – the kind found in reading rooms of libraries – allow room for perusing the voluminous selection.

The shelves on the fifth floor include works on Americana and foreign nations. Blue tags jut from the bookcases with names of countries regions like a miniature League of Nations.

Another flight above, on the sixth floor, is the autograph department. Where else can one see a letter from a mobster alongside one from science fiction author Isaac Asimov? Showbiz letterheads abound, along with those of presidents and chief justices. From Helen Keller to Fred Astaire, the room is a star-studded paean to fame and achievement. Ms. Hample recalled one person’s comment after seeing all the photos and autographs on the walls. She was asked, “Do you know the DNA that is in this room?”

But Ms. Hample and her sisters may themselves have bookselling in their genes. Their late father, Louis Cohen, who died in 1991, opened a bookstore on Astor Place along Fourth Avenue’s “Book Row” around 1926. He moved the shop to 59th Street in the early 1930s and settled into its present location in 1964. He never encouraged his daughters to enter the book business, Ms. Cohen said. Ms. Hample said, “He discouraged us. I think he was smart enough to use reverse psychology.”

Ms. Hample said her father once bought an enormous collection of medical books and other historical subjects from Dr. Henry Hart, who lived in Bridgeport, Conn. As a young girl, Ms. Hample would drive to Connecticut with her father in their station wagon each weekend to sort through the tens of thousands of books in Hart’s collection. She recalled that they would have to walk into the rooms sideways, through the stacks of books. At one point, Hart advised Cohen to hurry in sorting through the collection because he was trying to sell the house. Cohen inquired how much the house cost: “$25,000,” Hart said. “I’ll take it,” Cohen said.

gshapiro@nysun.com