Marilyn Hasbrouck, co-owner of architecture-themed Prairie Avenue Bookshop in Chicago, Ill., died March 21. She was 91. The Chicago Sun-Times reported she created a space that, throughout its 35-year existence, "was much more than an architectural book retailer. It was a meeting ground for architects and design devotees, where buyers could find rare works or the latest ones--then kick back in furniture designed or inspired by the likes of Mies van der Rohe, or Charles Rennie Mackintosh." The bookstore closed in 2009.
With her husband, the architect and preservationist Wilbert R. Hasbrouck (who died in 2018), the couple turned what began as a book collection in the basement of their Palos Park home in the late 1960s into what the Financial Times called "the best architectural bookstore in the world."
"That was her thing," architect Charles Hasbrouck, one of the couple's two sons, said of the bookstore. "A lot of people thought that was my dad's bookstore. In fact, while they were partners on all [of their endeavors, the bookstore] was always my mother's. She was the proprietor. She ran the bookstore."
Marilyn Hasbrouck earned a degree from Iowa State Teachers College (now University of Northern Iowa), then moved to Mapleton, Iowa, where she met and married her husband.
"She was always interested in the arts," said Charles Hasbrouck. "Painting and music and architecture and all those various arts. And that's one of the things that brought them together."
By 1959, the couple had relocated to Chicago. Wilbert Hasbrouck collected architecture books, including rare titles, and the couple formed Prairie School Press to reprint books that were out-of-print and hard-to-find. By 1964, they started the publication Prairie School Review, which "profiled the works of architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan and lesser-known Midwestern Prairie School architects," the Sun-Times noted.
Wilbert Hasbrouck was eventually hired to assemble libraries for architecture schools. The books and magazines stored in their basement were ultimately used to open the Prairie Avenue Bookshop in 1974, which moved twice before settling at its final location on Wabash Ave. in 1995. It "became globally known for its huge selection and also its backlist of vintage books that were still in publication. Noted for its three levels and 14,000 volumes, the Wabash Avenue store was also celebrated for its classy, welcoming décor," the Sun-Times wrote.
"She arranged the furniture, arranged the objects, arranged the books," Charles Hasbrouck said. "She worked cash register; she ordered the books. When you came in, pretty much everything you saw was what she wanted you to see."