Main: Literature

With a quick click of the “Leave Meeting” button, students return to the monotonous rhythm of life in a pandemic. Largely empty libraries are void of the whispers that used to echo off the walls. The silence is deafening.

“No! I met Art Spiegelman here.” “Our lovely neighborhood bookshop! Please bring it back!” “We DON’T need more empty storefronts.” Post-it notes bearing messages written by everyone, from longtime customers to young children, adorned the now quiet storefront of Book Culture’s location on Columbus Avenue on Thursday afternoon.

Book Culture’s location on Columbus Avenue is temporarily closed after it was “seized … unexpectedly, by our landlord,” according to a post on the bookseller’s Facebook page. The other three stores—including the 112th Street and Broadway locations that are frequented by Columbia students—remain open.

Labyrinth Books was opened in 1997 by Chris Doeblin and his business partners with support from Columbia professors and administrators who longed for a local bookstore that focused on academic texts and could serve the greater Morningside Heights community. That store, which would later become Book Culture, opened its doors adjacent to a USPS on 112th Street, a spot where it is currently struggling to remain.

The empty lots left in Morningside Heights when a beloved local business shuts its doors are shocking at first. As the months go by, while students and residents await the announcement of which national chain may fill the storefront gap, the emptiness becomes familiar.