1 of 2
Photography courtesy of the Book House
2 of 2
By now, even if you've never been to the Book House, you've probably heard about the Book House. It’s the 1863 historic home in Rock Hill that some 30 years ago became a bookstore—and not just any bookstore.
The place still looks very much like a home, with bookshelves filling parlors and bedrooms, stacks of books crammed onto each step of staircases, and a musty cellar filled with bargain-priced volumes.
If you believe there can be wonder in reading, you may find a home (literally) at the Book House, where the narrow paths winding through three stories of closely placed bookshelves create a veritable maze of books, a wonder in itself. Book and bookstore lovers understand that the Book House is the closest shop we have—and we’re likely to ever have—to the spirit of Paris’ Shakespeare and Company, a dusty, cluttered temple to the glory of literary peregrinations.
The reason you may have heard of the Book House of late is because it is scheduled to be torn down to make way for an EZ Storage facility, and the bookshop’s owner, Michelle Barron, has taken to the local as well as national media to beg for a miracle.
The miracle, she says, would be the $50,000 or so she would need in the next week to fund a move to another retail space.
“It’s gonna take that because we don’t have a whole lot in the bank, and it’s gonna take first and last month’s rent, a build-out, professional movers, et cetera,” she says. “$50,000 is a conservative estimate. We have an Indiegogo campaign.”
If an angel investor does not magically appear, Barron says, she will move the books to a warehouse and sell them online only. Now that her landlord has given her till the end of July to vacate, she needs to begin packing up the 300,000 books right away.
“It'll take us three months to get out of there,” she adds. “And we don't have any place to go yet. A broker has been helping us to look for someplace else, and I’ve been looking for a long time. Having low overhead is what’s kept us in business this long.”
It sounds like the fight is all but over.
“It's not really unexpected,” Barron says. “The Sword of Damocles has been hanging over our heads for a while. We've tried to buy the building, and the bank wouldn’t give us a loan. We couldn’t afford a mortgage. In 2005, we tried to move to Maplewood, and we couldn’t afford it. Five years ago, we almost went out of business because of economics. We clawed out of the recession to where we were breaking even, and now this.”
There is a tiny glimmer of hope that a magnanimous investor could come through at the last minute.
“It could happen,” Barron says. “There are philanthropists out there.”
A recent rally along Manchester Road offered little more than symbolic support, but it did warm Barron’s heart. Similarly, a petition, even if signed by thousands of people, would probably have little effect on the machinations of capitalism that are locked into place.
Do consider stopping by this charming business before it goes bye-bye. Go upstairs, where you must crouch as you approach books under sloping roofs—and practically crawl to get inside the “poetry alcove.” Check out the famously large sci-fi and history sections. Offer a scratch behind the ears to Blake, the friendly bookstore cat named after the mystic poet.
And say hello to Barron, who will soon begin the next, less public phase of her career.
“If people love a place, they have to patronize it,” she says. “If people want something to be in their community, they have to shop there regularly. If you want the cheapest price, you won’t have bookstores; you'll just have warehouses and online sales.”
