Strand Bookstore Redesigns, 'Deshelves'

Shelf Awareness

"My daughter is doing it," Fred Bass, legendary co-owner of the Strand bookstore in Manhattan, told the New Yorker to explain how Nancy Bass Wyden is attempting "the most recent of many waves of modernization that have taken place at the store since 2001, when the family bought the building that the store occupies, at 828 Broadway."

Strand recently hired a design company for advice regarding "what customers want now and in the future," said store manager Eddie Sutton.

In addition to trading "the bag check for video cameras and plainclothes security," moving the book-buying counter from the front to the back of the store and creating "two well-signed information desks on the first floor," the big change "was the deshelving, which replaced twenty-two shelving units from the back of the first floor with nine modular tables," the New Yorker wrote, adding: "The new open area is four hundred and forty square feet, roughly the size of a studio apartment."