Taylor & Co. Books to Open in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Taylor & Co. Books will be opening at 1021 Cortelyou Road in Brooklyn, N.Y. Brownstoner reported that when owner Andrew Colarusso was growing up in Ditmas Park, he used to get his haircut at Christyles barbershop, located in the same building that will house his shop more than 15 years later. Colarusso is aiming for a March 4 launch, and he hopes Taylor & Co. Books will provide "a service, a space for cultural dissemination, for gathering and discourse, for escapism, and early childhood literacy."

"Never would I have truly dared to dream, to allow myself to believe, that I'd open a bookstore in the neighborhood I grew up in," he said. "We millennials have been cursed with chronic itinerancy--post-9/11, post-recession. So the far-flung dream of building in the neighborhood I grew up in seemed an impossibility."

Colarusso has been obsessed with books for as long as he can remember, he said: "Well before I could read or comprehend narrative structure or poetic form, I just loved books. As a form of technology, I was fascinated by cover art, by the random-access memory of the codex and its table of contents, by pages and their weights and their tactile differences."

His family shopped at Mostly Books, which was located on Cortelyou Road from 1978 until the 1990s. Colarusso described it as "an important and magical place (literally) for my family because our visits there coincided with the rise in popularity of Harry Potter books." He hopes Taylor & Co. Books will build on Mostly Books' local legacy.

The bookshop will stock new and used books, as well as other items of interest, including instant cameras, binoculars and bird guides, home goods and toys, Colarusso said, adding that "of course our focus will be on books." He has three goals in mind for the bookshop: to make it practical, comfortable, and aesthetically pleasing. 

Colarusso is running a $20,000 GoFundMe campaign; money raised will go toward covering the $7,500 deposit, first month's rent of $3,500, new inventory, the installation of furniture, "and other necessities like point of sale software and hardware, website development, utilities and maintenance."

"I want Taylor & Co. to feel like a home to anyone who swings by," he said. "And once that feeling is there, I hope not only to maintain goodwill and loyalty among patrons, but also manage a sustainable and growing business."

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