architectural book stores  

Prairie Avenue Bookstore?
Prairie Avenue Bookstore?

Peter Miller Architecture and Design Books
Peter Miller Architecture and Design Books is a small book store in Seattle. It has a really nice selection from all over the world! 🙂

Hennessy and Ingalls bookstore...
In Los Angeles is the best I've ever been in.

I would hope
every major city has one. I was led to our William Stout (at it's early address on Osgood Place, in the old downtown) by a friend who was (god help us) an architectural historian. Bill is an architect, and still in the book business, having begun his publishing career a dozen or so years ago with the re-edition of David Gebhard's seminal volume on Rudolph Schindler, with new color illustrations, etc.

London
is blessed with fantastic bookshops
Zwemmer, Koenig and Claire Du Rouen are all wonderful !
http://www.wah-magazine.com/postview.php?t=culture&i=43

Chicago
Sadly Prairie Avenue bookstore closed last year

Annette
It's been several years since I have been back to Chicago, and I wonder if this is the one I speak of. All I remember is a very library like atmosphere with a step up from the front to where the books are. There were several old Corbu chairs (LC2?) in blue with painted frames and what looked to be Mackintosh chairs with the tall backs.

Prarie Bookshop
Yes, that's the one - a couple of streets away from the Art Institute. I always call in on my annual visit to see grandchildren but last August it was nearly empty and I got waved away by even grumpier than usual (and who could blame them this time) shop assistants.
It most be tricky to make something like this pay. Possibly people browsed and then ordered from Amazon. Shame though

Too bad. And yes that is the...
Too bad. And yes that is the reason I would never open one, unless it was mostly vintage books ... but then you can get that from Amazon as well. Same reason my pal's music store closed. Despite the fact he sold interesting and more rare titles specifically catering to music nerds.
The internet. Yep.
RIP Prairie Avenue. I googled some photos and found this...
BTW I also remember some photo developing store or camera store nearby with four matching blue Eames Aluminum group lounges in the window .... ring a bell?

As always, photos/links are...
As always, photos/links are fun. Post the photos and links of your favorite places!! Do most of these places seem to be nicely furnished/designed? I would hope so. I love the Prairie's old library look.
I wonder what things a place like this could offer that would help it succeed? The initial thought would be events, but while they raise awareness they don't necessarily translate to a ringing cash register.

Maybe the question needs...
Maybe the question needs flipped around, in the JFK tradition: what could we offer to help the bookstore succeed?
Ask not what your bookstore can do for you but ...
Not even taking into account the difficulty of that pesky old word Success.

Books
I think the future may well be with eReaders or iPads, rather than actual books. I've just had to clear the house of an elderly aunt who has recently died and it was stuffed with old books, of no particular financial value, that she had collected over her lifetime - also old (and now unidentifiable) photos.
This is now sadly just junk that is going to get moved around from jumble sale to charity shop. When the iPad has been perfected, a few years from now, I can see the advantages of having a lot of this detritus of our lives in digital form.
American books seem to be better made that the British version, but I have got tired of having pages fall out of poorly bound books and can see the advantages of having the content in another form.
Thanks for the Prarie Bookshop interior photos

Wow, that would be a great...
Wow, that would be a great title for a new book: The Digital Detritus of Our Lives.
*
http://www.bu.edu/agni/authors/C/Carol-Potter.html

Security
It certainly feels better to go on holiday taking a hundred epub books on a reader and all my music, and family films and photos, with me in a device or two that fits in a pocket - all the important things that I couldn't bear to lose