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Storied foreign-language bookstore in Harvard Square to close
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This is a damn shame
High Boston rents seem to only be paving the way for Starbucks, Chipotles, & other large chain businesses (and of course luxury condos)..... Sad!!
Oh no!
What a shame!
I know we can't expect owners to not raise their rent prices in a high value area. But I wish there were a way to keep the character of these places. It'll be sad when Harvard Square is nothing but an outdoor mall filled solely with CVS, American Eagle, and other generic stores.
A great loss
It's so sad to see the disappearance of all that used to make Harvard Square a great place to go. It's especially sad to see the loss of bookstores - yes, Amazon helped bring about their demises, but so did exorbitant rents (and you can't blame Amazon for the loss of non-chain cheap and medium priced places to eat).
In college, one of our favorite date night activities was to go to dinner in Harvard Square and then spend hours browsing the bookstores.
And now …
it's a fucking froyo place.
I do love how businesses and owners cry poor about how they'll never be able to rent their storefronts without ample parking, yet they have no problem jacking up the rents for businesses like this.
Might not become FroYo
The Final Club that shares the building has been trying to push Schoenhof's out for years so they could expand. I'd be surprised if another retail space of any kind opened up instead.
Meanwhile, Harvard is trying to push out the final clubs
so expanding one of them doesn't make a whole lot of sense right now.
Maybe
The Final Clubs will continue to exist, with or without Harvard affiliation. They're essentially private clubs. This one in particular is well-funded by alumni.
They already lack Harvard
They already lack Harvard affiliation. The university is taking a harder stance, making club members ineligible for Rhodes and Marshall scholarships, or being the leader of a student activity or team.
From today's Boston Globe:
From today's Boston Globe:
Daniel Eastman, Schoenhof’s director of marketing and sales, said the Spee Club “has been really kind with us. This should’ve happened three years ago, but they tried really hard to find some way to help us stay.”
Shoenhof's Foreign Books. Ars Libri.
One of the heads of Schoenhof's foreign Books http://www.schoenhofs.com/ used to be Sheppard Ferguson http://www.sheppardferguson.com/ who later also headed up Ars Libri http://www.arslibri.com/
Boston Public Library's World Languages Collections shelves offer great browsing on the Mezzanine Level http://www.bpl.org/central/plan.htm
Widener Library language specialists are great resources
https://www.google.com/search?q=widner+library+foreign+language+specialists
High Rents?
Chrissakes, they've been in business for 160 years and never bothered to buy their own storefront??? High rent didn't put them out of business, lack of management foresight did.
The Starr Book Shop used to
The Starr Book Shop used to be in the back of the Lampoon building. But they were evicted, not so the Lampoon could charge higher rent, but so they could have more party space. (The Lampoon is a frat -- the magazine is an occasional distraction.)