Howard founded Booksellers Row in the late seventies, on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago . Those were the heady days of Lincoln Park s intellectual, eclectic renaissance -- readers and book-lovers filled neighborhood streets, rents were reasonable, and live music, good food & interesting arts programming at the Biograph Theater made Lincoln Avenue THE hip street.
Old-time customers may even remember the original location, at 2511 North Lincoln and its former faces, John's Bookstore followed by Second-Hand Rose. Howard Cohen brought fresh stock into the old shelves in November, 1978, and named his new enterprise Booksellers Row, after the old-time Chicago book neighborhood downtown.
That first winter was a doozie -- that was the year we had the huge snow (February of seventy-nine) -- and Howard stuck balloons on top of the six-foot snowbanks, with arrows pointing --This Way To Knowledge.--
Three years later the store relocated a block down the street, to 2445, where it remained for another 18 years. (Periwinkle restaurant moved into the 2511 space, by the way, another lamented former glory of Lincoln Avenue!) The 2445 Lincoln store was known for its rolling wooden ladders and amazingly knowledgeable staff. It was also perhaps the best-organized used bookstore on the planet!
Lincoln Avenue was a great book street. At various times, neighbors Guild Books, The Children's Bookstore, Dan Behnke and Powell's Bookstore all operated within a few blocks. Readers found anything they needed in a single shopping trip.
Booksellers Row also opened branches on South Michigan Avenue & Milwaukee Avenue. Through all three locations, countless books found their rightful owners and hundreds of individual collections grew.
Many old customers will remember Howard wearing baby Jeremy or Laura in the Snuggli behind the counter, while pricing books or ringing up sales (with that pencil behind his ear!).
Times changed, and so did the book business. Lincoln Avenue lost its bookstores, one by one. The three Booksellers Row stores are now history -- though they live on in memory and across countless Chicagoland shelves. That is shelves, quite literally -- for many of our favorite customers bought the oak, pine and cherry book-cases for their own libraries when we finally closed our doors! That thought warms our hearts.