It was the Argonaut Book Shop in San Francisco.
From a piece in the San Francisco Chronicle...
People ask all the time, "Is this where Hitchcock filmed 'Vertigo'?" And the answer is no. They shot it at my dad's store, six blocks away.
Actually, they filmed his shop and re-created the interior on a soundstage. That's what you see in the film. But I can look at the movie now, pause it and say, "Well, they did a pretty good job (duplicating it). They just missed that one corner."
I never met Hitchcock - I was about 10 at the time, and didn't care - but my dad and mom often went down to his home (near Santa Cruz) to have lunch with him.
My dad opened the Argonaut Book Shop on Kearny Street in 1941, in the heart of the Financial District. In 1969, when the Bank of America headquarters went up a block away, the rent went from $350 to $1,350 a month - about $8,000 in today's money.
So we shrugged our shoulders and moved up here to Sutter Street near Jones. About that time, my dad started getting ill with a few strokes. So I took over. This is the longest-running San Francisco bookstore under one family.
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