Brazenhead Books in New York
Independent bookshops are pretty magical places. Cosy rooms with books stacked floor to ceiling on shelves, tables, even the floor, make even the vastest of them seem intimate.
For most of us, it’s the closest we’ll get to the wonder that countless fictional characters have felt at discovering some forbidden library in the house of their bitter, unfeeling guardian.
Brazenhead Books in New York has captured this feeling of the forbidden library, because although a bookshop, its whereabouts is a secret.
Michael Seidenberg has hidden his shop out of necessity — it’s housed in a residential building not zoned for commercial use.
He moved his shop to his apartment after the rent on his storefront in Brooklyn became too high to maintain.
Etsy recently spoke with Seidenberg, and filmed this beautiful video getting some history of the shop. There’s No Place Like Here: Brazenhead Books from Etsy on Vimeo.
Brazenhead Books is open to the public by appointment only. Seidenberg can supposedly be found in the phonebook, but thus far we haven’t been able to get him on the line and arrange a visit to this truly special bookshop for ourselves (apologies to the other Michael Seidenbergs we’ve been calling).
However, as perhaps the next best thing, we did find this tour Seidenberg gave of the shop to Freebird Books:
Amanda Farah
What do you think?