An Upper East Side Reversal: Independent Book Store Opens

In a neighborhood better known for Hermes and the Hampton Jitney, a small store specializing in used books has quietly opened its doors on Park Avenue.Cobbled together from private collections, estate sales, and even building doormen, the store’s eclectic collection includes a copy of “Mummies, Disease and Ancient Cultures” and “The Story of Decipherment: From Egyptian Hieroglyphic to Linear B.”“From 50 cents to $1,500,” boasts the proprietor Jason Wachtelhausen, who has an anchor tattoo and a platinum tooth, about the store’s prices.Located on the former site of Gorgeous Market at the northeast corner of 75th Street and Park Avenue, the Park Ave. Corner Shop hosted its grand opening Friday, serving beer from a small brewery in Brattleboro, Vt.The store marks a return of sorts for the Upper East Side: It counters the trend of independent store closings over the past decade. Many still feel the loss of Madison Avenue Bookshop and Books & Co., and the Park Ave. Corner Store recalls a smaller version of the Bryn Mawr Book Shop, once located below street level around York Avenue.Customers in the store so far have included doctors, a famous author’s ex-girlfriend, and a peace treaty negotiator. A neighborhood resident, Judy Katz, strolled in with her dog, Rupert. Milk-Bone biscuits lay in a bowl near a large stack of Foreign Affairs magazines, whose gray covers lend the table its gravitas.That afternoon, a graduate student in English at Vassar, Lauren Hunter, bought “February House” by Sherill Tippin, a book about a communal house in Brooklyn where Carson McCullers and W.H. Auden lived.In the back area behind the bookcases is a large storage area with boxes of books strewn around as though the Columbia College Core Curriculum had met a hurricane. Eventually, the books could fill the shelves of people’s libraries and enter their thoughts.Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Wachtelhausen moved to Swedesboro, N.J., when he was in second grade. He lived in Toronto and in Ohio before moving to Missouri, where he worked in a poultry factory. He has been a bouncer, a coordinator of a school in Guatemala, and, most recently, he owned a record store called the Dog Museum in Brattleboro, Vt.He acquired a love for books from his father, a customs inspector who was an avid book collector. He and his father would go book and record shopping on Saturdays.Mr. Wachtelhausen said presently his favorite bookstores in New York include St. Mark’s Bookshop and Twelfth Street Books. He declined to say how much he was paying in rent, but said he chose the Upper East Side for his shop because there was nothing like it anywhere around.

An Upper East Side Reversal: Independent Book Store Opens

An Upper East Side Reversal: Independent Book Store Opens

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