Scribner's Bookstore Was the Apple Store of It's Day

The New York Times revels in the old retail space of Charles Scribner's Sons, book publishers.

From the piece...

Mr. Safford was the retail chief of Scribner’s in the 1910s and ’20s, when the release of books — not tablets or apps — could cause a sensation. Scribner’s closed in 1989 but its interior became an official New York City landmark. [The designation report is available as a PDF from the Neighborhood Preservation Center.] As a consequence, it has kept a lot of its original character. Even in its current incarnation as a branch of the Sephora cosmetics chain, it still feels like the kind of place where a purchase is a “great ceremonial event,” as Paul Goldberger wrote in 1978, when he was the architecture critic of The New York Times.