Last night Rizzoli Bookstore celebrated the imminent reopening of its iconic New York City bookstore, which had to leave West 57th Street last year and is reappearing at 1133 Broadway at 26th Street.
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| Rizzoli's Laura Donnini | |
Noting that the store will open to the public next Monday, July 27, but acknowledging there is still much work to be done, Laura Donnini, CEO of RCS Libri, the book publishing arm of RCS MediaGroup, Milan, said, "Indeed, we are late. We wondered if we should offer more espresso to the workers, but instead we're showing them the Italian way: we'll be ready at the last minute on Monday."
She emphasized the company's commitment to the printed book and traditional bookstores. "People who love books love to spend time browsing books, touching books, finding books." She said that the store offers "a discovery experience" based in large part on Rizzoli's "experienced and expert booksellers, helping and serving and surprising" customers.
The 5,000-square-foot space in the historic St. James Building offers "the classic architectural experience for which the former bookstore locations were celebrated, integrated into a new vision that matches today's tastes and the energy of its new location," as Rizzoli put it.
The new Rizzoli has an 18' × 34' glass façade that showcases the interior's 18-foot-high ceilings, a peaked skylight and an windowed salon entered via a red mullioned pivot door. Many of the fixtures from the 57th Street store were preserved and have been used in the new space, including its cherry wood bookcases and brass-and-iron chandeliers.
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| Diane von Furstenberg and Charles Miers, publisher, Rizzoli New York |
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The store has wallpaper custom designed by Fornasetti Milano and custom made by Cole & Son. The designs run as a frieze above the bookcases to the ceiling in all three grand rooms and feature motifs of Italian cities floating in the clouds, hot air balloons, zodiac figures and the classic Fornasetti collage of newspaper fragments overlaid with colorful butterflies.
Incidentally, the bookstore's staff includes Philip Turner, who's been helping get the store ready for the public and will work regularly once it opens officially. Turner will continue to operate Philip Turner Book Productions, his editorial and publishing consultancy. His job at Rizzoli is a nice coming home of sorts: his family owned Under Cover Books, which had several stores in and around Cleveland, Ohio. He worked there until the mid-1980s, when he moved to New York City. Since then, he's held senior editorial positions at Union Square Press; Carroll & Graf, Thunder's Mouth and Philip Turner Books at Avalon Publishing; Times Books; and Kodansha America.