Shakespeare & Co. Makes a Comeback on NYC's Upper West Side

On Saturday, Shakespeare & Co. opened a third store, on Broadway between 69th and 70th streets on the Upper West Side in New York City. The store is a homecoming of sorts, since the original flagship Shakespeare & Co. store opened in 1982 at 81st and Broadway. That store closed in 1996, several years after a Barnes & Noble superstore opened at 82nd and Broadway.

"We see this as sort of a happier ending to You've Got Mail, where Shakespeare finds a new location a few blocks south," said Shakespeare & Co. CEO Dane Neller. "The welcoming and good will wishes from the local residents have been overwhelming. The sales at the Upper West Side store were record-breaking over the weekend."

Shakespeare opened a store in Philadelphia, Pa., last month, joining its store on Lexington Ave. on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Next spring, the company plans to open yet another store, in Greenwich Village (in the site of the old Jefferson Market at 450 Sixth Avenue near 11th St.). And it says it plans to open additional stores in other markets "in 2019 and beyond."

The new Upper West Side store follows the Shakespeare & Co. model of being about 3,000 square feet, "featuring well-stocked and exquisitely curated fiction, nonfiction and children's book departments, an intimate literary café with seating and wi-fi, and the Espresso Book Machine technology, which has a catalog of approximately seven million published and mainly public domain titles." (Dane Neller is a founder of On Demand Books, which makes Espresso Book Machines. Neller bought Shakespeare & Co. in 2015.)

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