While the world continues to increase its streaming service platforms and major companies fight for more subscribers and their monthly payments, a corner in New York City is gaining a bookstore.
Founded in 1917 by the Drama League, The Drama Book Shop is an independent bookstore with one of the largest selection of plays in the country, and in the past century has survived a fire, floods, multiple break-ins and robberies, and several location changes. However, Manhattan’s brutal rent hike that has caused many retailers to struggle almost ended its legacy in October 2018. Enter: Alexander Hamilton. Well, Lin-Manuel Miranda et al.
After news broke that the owners would not be renewing the lease for the store’s 40th street location, alarm swept through the theater community and a solution was sought out. Shortly after, in January 2019, the saving grace came like a Deus ex machina figure in the form of Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator, writer, and former star of the acclaimed Hamilton.
Miranda and three of his Hamilton collaborators – lead producer Jeffrey Seller, president of the Nederlander Organization James L. Nederlander, and director of Hamilton Thomas Kail – purchased the bookstore from its then current owner, Rozanne Seelen, whose husband, Arthur Seelen, had bought it in 1958 (though he died in 2000).
The four new owners decided to relocate the shop but keep its location within the theater district of midtown Manhattan. The Drama Book Shop is set to reopen in March 2020 at its new location on West 39th, and the store’s designer is none other than the set designer for Hamilton, David Korins. For the reimagined store, Korins created a new centerpiece described by The New York Times to be “a large spiral worm-shaped sculpture of dramatic literature, busting out of the back wall and corkscrewing into the space.”
The store will retain its multifunctional character that it has had since the beginning, with reading spaces, a spot with a piano (upon which Miranda wrote most of In the Heights), and a basement level that will be used for classes, readings, and other gatherings.
The Drama Book Shop has long been a space for people of similar aspirations and careers to come together and converse, commiserate, congratulate, and collaborate. Miranda and Kail worked together on much of In the Heights in the basement of the 40th street location, and the store boasts of famous patrons such as Marilyn Monroe, Bette Midler, Katharine Hepburn, John Lithgow, Marlene Dietrich, Alan Cumming, and José Ferrer. The store stocks over 20,000 titles and sells around 155,000 items a year, and in 2011, it was even given a Tony Award for “excellence in theater.”
According to an article in The New York Times, the new store on West 39th will sell “coffee, merchandise and writing materials, along with play scripts, librettos and books about the arts” within a space that has a “look inspired by European cafes and a reading room atmosphere.”
As a piece of New York City history that has inspired, touched, and aided countless students in search of a monologue or professionals like Annie Baker in need of a quiet space to write their next great play, the rescuing of The Drama Book Shop is not merely a victory against the mass consumerism of monopolizing corporations but also, for many, a deeply personal triumph that will hopefully continue to affect many more to come.
The Junction Journal 