Bookshops

The city’s oldest independent bookshop, founded in 1925 and still run by the founder’s descendants, occupying an entire six-storey townhouse that the skyscrapers grew around rather than over. Fifty thousand out-of-print books on the main floor and in the basement, a mezzanine of leather bindings and fine sets, first editions and history on the fifth, and a gallery of antique maps, prints and autographs by the entrance — the last of which makes a better gift than almost anything else in this collection. A further eighty thousand rare books are held off-site and brought out on request, so if you are hunting something specific, telephone before coming. They frame and they ship.

The grandest of the rare book dealers, and the one to choose if you are buying rather than browsing: first editions, signed and inscribed copies, and autograph material across every field, shown in a gallery setting with the original bookcases and sign carried over from their previous Madison Avenue room. The staff are specialists and will talk at length to someone who is genuinely interested, which is the pleasure of the place even for a visitor with no intention of spending. If you want a significant gift — a milestone birthday, a retirement, an anniversary — this is the first call, and they will source against a brief.

A long-standing dealer in rare and out-of-print art books, now in a small Upper East Side room a few streets from the museums. Set expectations before sending anyone: the shop itself is compact and holds a focused selection, mostly modernist, while the great majority of the stock sits in a warehouse and is ordered through the catalogue rather than browsed. If you are chasing a specific out-of-print monograph they are excellent and will answer an email the same day. For an afternoon among art books, Dashwood or Karma is the better walk.

When it opened in 2005 it was the only bookshop in New York selling photography books and nothing else, and it still is the reference. Its founder ran Magnum Photos as cultural director for twelve years before this, which shows in the depth of the out-of-print holdings and in the house imprint that publishes limited-edition monographs of its own. The shelving follows an internal logic rather than an alphabet, and not everything carries a price, so the way to use the shop is to describe what you like and let the desk assemble a stack for you — they are unusually good at it, and they will ship the result home.

A non-profit devoted to publications made by artists as works in themselves, and the most purely interesting room on this list: zines, editions, postcards, records and books that exist nowhere else, arranged with seats among them so that you are expected to sit and read rather than buy and go. It is a short walk from the Chelsea galleries and makes the natural end of an afternoon spent in them. Ask at the desk if you are after a particular subject — the stock is deep, idiosyncratic, and not always shelved where you would expect.

The bookshop of the Karma gallery, and one of the best-edited art selections in the city: monographs, exhibition catalogues and the gallery’s own publications, laid out with the same care as the ceramics in the window. It is small and quiet and on a residential block, which is much of the appeal — you can be in and out in ten minutes or lost for an hour. Not everything carries a visible price, so ask. Its posted hours are the least reliable on this list, which is the one thing to check before making the trip.

A light, spare room on Avenue A where the books are laid on tables rather than shelved in ranks, and the selection is the point: new, used and out-of-print art and photography titles chosen with a clear eye, plus enough odd and uncirculated material that regulars come specifically to find what they did not know existed. It is not large. What it is, is open until eight every night of the week, which makes it the one shop in this section you can reach after a museum or before dinner.

Founded by a Chelsea gallerist and run with the same instincts: art and photography at the front, and behind it one of the strongest tables of literature in translation anywhere in the city — internationally admired writers who are simply not stocked elsewhere in America. The room is tiny and the staff read rather than hover, which suits it. Of everything on this list it is the one where you are most likely to leave with a book you had never heard of and finish it on the flight home.

A narrow West Village newsstand that became an institution by simply refusing to stop stocking print: hundreds of international titles across fashion, art, design, architecture, travel and politics, piled floor to ceiling in an order only the staff understand. If you want a European title the week it comes out, this is where it is. There is now a small café and coffee-table book room next door. Ask for what you want rather than digging — the shop works on conversation, and the answer is usually yes.

Art and architecture books, an espresso bar, and a programme that runs to talks, book launches, exhibitions, listening evenings and an annual lamp show — which tells you most of what you need to know about the place. The reading is curated from around the world and all of it is for sale. It is daytime only, which makes it the natural pairing with an afternoon at BAM or a walk through the Navy Yard rather than an evening out, and the matcha is among the better ones in Brooklyn.

Founded in 1964 and now installed in the St. James Building, a Beaux-Arts landmark of 1896 — chandeliers, wooden cases running the height of the walls, and a painted sky across the ceiling. The stock plays to it: illustrated books above all, architecture, photography, design, art and cooking, along with a serious foreign-language section that reflects the house’s Italian parentage. There is a children’s room behind red-framed glass doors that people remember longer than the rest. With an hour to spare and rain outside, there is nothing better within three minutes of the hotel.

Founded in 1927 and the last survivor of Book Row, where forty-eight bookshops once stood along Fourth Avenue; still owned by the founder’s granddaughter. Three floors of new, used and remaindered books, dollar carts on the pavement, and more tote bags than seems strictly necessary. The part most visitors miss is the third floor: a rare book room, calm and properly staffed, where first editions and fine bindings can be found at prices that are not always what the surroundings suggest. Go there first, then work downwards.

If you want a bookshop and mean the idea of a bookshop, this is it: a corner room in the West Village, dark wood and warm light, small enough to look at every shelf in half an hour and edited well enough that half of them will tempt you. The staff recommend rather than direct, and they wrap a purchase in paper with a ribbon and a bookmark tucked inside, which turns any book bought here into a gift without further effort. It is among the best places in the city to be caught in the rain.

Sarah McNally opened the first of these in 2004 and now runs five across the city, buying more books than anyone here except Barnes & Noble and the Strand, with a publishing imprint of her own devoted to reissuing good books that fell out of print. This is the Seaport branch, and the setting earns it a place over the others: cobbles and river outside, two floors of carpeted quiet within, open until nine every night. The staff recommendations are written out at length and are worth reading even if you buy nothing.

A double-height room off Crosby Street with a wrought-iron staircase and a mezzanine running round it, a café at the back, and books that are almost entirely donated — which means both that the prices are low and that the selection changes weekly, so it rewards the second visit more than the first. All proceeds go to the charity’s work on homelessness and HIV/AIDS. It is a genuinely beautiful space, hosts readings most weeks, and is the easiest place in SoHo to spend an hour without spending money.

The first bookshop in the city opened by an Asian American woman, and it reads as a shop with an argument rather than an inventory: Asian and diasporic writers foremost, alongside a wider selection that leans queer, political and independent. There is a coffee and matcha counter at the front and a basement of graphic novels with armchairs in it. It stays open until eleven on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, which no other bookshop on this list does, and that makes it the answer when you want somewhere to go after dinner that is not a bar.

Opened by the novelist Emma Straub and run as though every book on the table has an advocate: handwritten cards in front of most of them, arguing the case at length and far better than any algorithm. The children’s section is the strongest in Brooklyn and the events calendar is relentless. It is a bright, welcoming, step-free room, and the staff will find something for a specific reader in about ninety seconds if you describe them properly.

The largest collection of French-language books in the United States, and the only French bookshop left in New York since Librairie de France closed in 2009 — more than fourteen thousand titles from thirty French-speaking countries, plus translations into English if you read only in English. It occupies two floors of the Payne Whitney House, a Stanford White palazzo bought by the French government in 1952 at Claude Lévi-Strauss’s urging, and the reading room upstairs has a night sky painted across its ceiling. There are armchairs and nobody minds how long you sit in them. Come here once you have been to every museum on the avenue.

Three floors opposite Bryant Park: English and Japanese books at street level, manga, art books and merchandise above, and in the basement the finest stationery selection in the city — fountain pens, inks, notebooks, Japanese paper — which is the part to see even if you read nothing while you are here. There is a café on the second floor with a window over the park, and it is a rare thing in Midtown: somewhere genuinely pleasant to spend an hour that costs nothing.