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THE GARDEN | MAGMA Nee 
“To business that we love we rise betime 
Marcu, 1916 
A NEW KIND OF BOOKSTORE 
About the first of March a bookstore will be 
opened at 38th Street and Fifth Avenue. It 
will be called ‘““The Lord & Taylor Book Shop. 
Conducted by Doubleday, Page & Co.” 
In starting this bookstore we appreciate that 
we have a great disadvantage—or advantage, 
as the case may be—in that we have the courage 
of ignorance; and we hope to try out some new 
ideas which, perhaps, if we had had more 
experience, we would never have the zeal 
to try. 
Like other publishers, Doubleday, Page & 
Company have spent hundreds of thousands of 
dollars to induce readers to go into bookstores 
to buy their books, and it is nothing new for 
publishers to keep bookstores. Charles Scrib- 
ner’s Sons, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, E. P. Dutton 
& Co., and many other publishers have done 
it for years; but it is new for a firm of pub- 
lishers to go into a codperative arrangement 
with a department store to conduct a rather 
different sort of bookstore, both houses pledg- 
ing themselves and their resources to make it 
a success. 
We are most anxious to make it clear that 
this is not an attempt to supersede the regular 
bookstore; our main endeavor will be to at- 
tract the attention of people who are buying 
other things to form the habit of buying books. 
If any of our ideas work out with success, our 
friends the booksellers will be welcome to all 
the experience we may acquire, and to acquire 
And go to ’t with delight.”—Antony and Cleopatra 
it we expect to spend a good deal of thought, 
time, and money. 
One thing interests us very much to try out. 
After spending a good deal of time visiting 
bookstores in various parts of the country, 
we have been struck with the fact that the 
floors of most bookstores are used for counters, 
long or short, covering practically all the floor 
space, on which are piled books in great 
quantities. The customer walks in the aisles 
between the counters, examines and selects his 
books, standing on his feet. We have watched 
many tired readers going over books in this 
uncomfortable position. This custom is, of 
course, not universal; but most books, we 
claim, are bought standing. 
We are going to try the experiment of keep- 
ing our floor comparatively free of counters 
but filled with chairs so that customers may 
sit down and buy in comfort. There will 
be a big library table in the middle of our 
book shop—and our shop will not be large, by 
the way, but we hope, cozy. There will be 
other tables and many comfortable places for 
the booklover to look and read, and not as he 
stands or runs. 
Do book-buyers appreciate the difficulties of 
the average bookseller in the matter of stock? 
How many people realize that about 8,000 new 
books are published each year in these United 
States, and that this has gone on for many 
years? A new shop like ours, which starts 
de nouveau, faces a heartbreaking problem to. 
have every particular book that every partic- 
ular person wants and still not fill the shop 
with thousands of volumes that nobody 
wants. 
There can, of course, be only one answer to this 
problem, we are going to do our best, and what 
we haven’t got, we will get as quickly as possible 
if a customer intrusts us with the order; and 
we shall simplify our problem somewhat by 
eliminating what we regard as the least nec- 
essary classes of books—books which are 
carried in large stores devoted exclusively to 
such books, like medical, technical, rare and 
scarce, second-hand books, and books in 
foreign languages. 
Another problem: The criticisms of book 
salesmen or saleswomen are constant and 
severe, and perhaps justifiably so. Here 
again we must refer to the immense flood of 
absolutely new books which the salesman must 
know, to say nothing of the old books. We are 
going to try to solve this problem as well as we 
can by having specialists in charge of separate 
departments and we shall announce the name 
of the head of each department, to help the 
visitor to know whois who. All this is nothing 
new, but we are going to try to keep these 
departments separate and up to the moment. 
There will be a trained librarian whose busi- 
ness it will be not to sell books, but to answer 
questions that one goes to a library to have an- 
swered. We shall call it the “‘service desk,” 
and she will have at her hands all the biblio- 
graphical tools of her trade and will supplement 
the information which the department heads 
usually give. 
Another new effort will be made in a maga- 
zine expert—a person who knows something 
more than the names and prices of current 
magazines. He is expected to know the 
character and individuality of all the magazines 
and what they are printing, and, with the help 
of a cumulative index, what, where, and when 
separate articles or groups of articles have been 
published. 
Fortunately for Doubleday, Page & Com- 
pany, upon whom is laid the actual conduct of 
the Lord & Taylor Bookshop, there exists in 
the building a new Chickering Hall, a rein- 
carnation, so to speak, of the old Chickering 
Hall, where so many delightful musical and 
literary events took place in the old days at 
18th Street and Fifth Avenue. In this charm- 
ing little theatre, which contains spacious 
seats for 299 people, the Bookshop plans to 
give many interesting and, we even hope, 
unique entertainments. 
For instance, we shall have a Kipling Day, 
a Stevenson Day, an O. Henry Day, a Conrad 
Day, when speakers of reputation will read 
from and tell about these and other distin- 
guished authors, showing portraits on the 
screen, places made famous by the books, the 
homes of the authors, with letters and manu- 
scripts which will bring home to the reader the 
real personality of his favorite writers. 
Of great importance will be the Children’s 
Department and Children’s Day in the Chick- 
ering Hall, but of this more hereafter. Many 
other things are planned to make the Bookshop 
interesting, and to help to turn people aside in 
a busy corner to enjoy what may be a new 
interest in their lives. 
