Gotham Book Mart
16 East 46th Street | Midtown | built 2008
Open on the map8 entries
The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 2003
The H. P. Kraus rare-book store closes in the earlier town house at 16 East 46th Street
The H. P. Kraus rare-book shop, which occupied the earlier five-story town house on this lot, closed in 2003. The Times described an elegant old-world store of wood-paneled rooms, a place for serious collectors where people might speak in whispers. Its stock leaned toward illustrated manuscripts and books printed before 1500. According to Andreas Brown, its founder, Hans Peter Kraus, who died in 1988, once paid several million dollars for a Gutenberg Bible mainly to have it on hand.
Source: The New York Times
- 2004
Andreas Brown leases the old Kraus shop to move the Gotham Book Mart one block south
On August 3, 2004, Andreas Brown, owner of the Gotham Book Mart, announced a long-term lease on the former H. P. Kraus store at 16 East 46th Street. A separate company, 16 East 46th Street Property L.L.C., had bought the building for $5.2 million, and Brown held an option to buy it later. After scouting 31 other locations, he had, with the Kraus family's permission, already moved much of his inventory over. Both houses had five stories, but the Kraus one offered about twice the space of his old shop at 41 West 47th Street, Brown said.
Source: The New York Times
- 2004
Brown plans a Joyce Society hall, an art gallery and the old Wise Men Fish Here sign for the new Gotham
In the former Kraus town house, Brown said, a ballroom-size open area on the second floor would host book-launch parties and gatherings of the James Joyce Society. The third floor, where the Krauses had entertained important clients, was to become an art gallery. The Gotham's Wise Men Fish Here sign, designed by the artist John Held Jr., would soon go up on the new facade. Asked whether wise men could still fish for books there, Brown said he thought so, but that it would be more like a lake.
Source: The New York Times
- 2006
Foot traffic thins on 46th Street as the Gotham's money troubles grow
In July 2006, two years after the Gotham moved into the former Kraus town house on this lot, a Village Voice writer overheard longtime employee Philip "Flip" Ahrens on the phone in the store. He was saying that few people were walking in, sales were weak, and the upper floor might be rented out while the books moved elsewhere. The writer described the block as more a passageway than a shopping destination, and noted that a web listing meant to sell the valuable stock had barely gotten past planning.
Source: Internet Archive
- 2006
Brown hides an eviction warrant behind signs saying the wise men have gone fishin'
In September 2006 the Times reported that the owners of the town house on this lot had moved to evict the Gotham and its owner, Andreas Brown. Friends of Brown said he had fallen behind on his $51,000 monthly rent and owed at least $500,000. Citing court papers and a friend of Brown's, the paper named the backers behind the 2004 purchase as Leonard Lauder and developer Edmondo Schwartz. Brown had put up storefront signs reading Wise Men and Women Gone Fishin' to hide the eviction warrant, though a marshal's notice was taped to the door.
Source: The New York Times
- 2007
A marshal's auction notice for the Gotham appears in the Times under the wrong name
On May 13, 2007, a small notice for a marshal's auction of the Gotham's stock ran at the back of the Times business section, beneath an announcement of a clearance sale of bras and panties. It advertised the tremendous inventory of a world famous literary landmark, but called the shop Gotham Book Store. The Village Voice later called the notice an ignominious obituary for the store.
Source: Internet Archive
- 2007
The landlord's lawyer bids $400,000 for the whole Gotham inventory and takes every lot
On May 22, 2007, several dozen dealers, collectors and former employees, each having put down a $1,000 deposit, lined up at the earlier town house on this lot to bid on an inventory split into more than 100 lots, among them books signed by John Updike, letters by D. H. Lawrence and Anais Nin, and Andy Warhol's wig rack. Minutes before the sale, Edward Gorey's papers were withdrawn because their ownership was in dispute. The landlord's lawyer bid $400,000 on everything, and because individual bids did not top that total, the landlord took it all.
Source: The New York Times
- 2010
A slim Gotham hotel rises on the lot, named for the bookstore and with a bookish restaurant
By August 2010 a slim hotel called the Gotham, planned as a boutique with 66 units in 22 stories, was nearly finished at 16 East 46th Street, on a lot no wider than the town house that once stood there. R+B Development built it, and Damir Sehic of C3D Architecture designed it. The name recalls the Gotham Book Mart, and the first-floor restaurant has bookshelves and leather armchairs meant to echo the shop's atmosphere.
Source: therealdeal.com
Further reading
- Gotham Book MartWikipedia
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