Congratulations to the Bookstore in Lenox, Mass., which will celebrate its 50th anniversary April 1 with an all-day open house, featuring food and drink, invited speakers, an open mic event, and more to mark Matt Tannenbaum's half-century at the helm.
Tannenbaum purchased the store from founder David Silverstein on April 1, 1976. Operating under its motto, "Serving the community since last Tuesday," the Bookstore will actually have been "serving the community" for 2,608 Tuesdays on its birthday.
The Bookstore has hosted hundreds of poetry readings and book launches, sometimes partnering with its neighbors the Lenox Library, Ventfort Hall, Shakespeare & Company, and Edith Wharton's The Mount. It was also featured in the documentary Hello, Bookstore.
Tannenbaum noted that the bookshop's "actual origin, in Stockbridge, in the mid-to-late 1960s, had ties with the late Alice Brock, who had gained fame through Arlo Guthrie's anti-war ballad 'Alice's Restaurant.' It was Alice's mother who found David Silverstein a place to live, and her father who loaned him several hundred dollars to start the Bookstore.
"The circle is made complete by an exhibition of some of Alice's art currently on view at the Shade Gallery at The Bookstore which opened late last fall and will continue into the spring season."
The Shade Gallery had its own beginning the year that Tannenbaum bought the store, 1976, the same year that Alice moved her restaurant from Stockbridge to Lenox, to a location now occupied by the Apple Tree Inn.
In 2015, just prior to his 40th anniversary, Tannenbaum added Get Lit wine bar. Eschewing the once popular trend of serving coffee in a bookshop, he opted for a different kind of congeniality.
After 50 years, Tannenbaum said he has no retirement plans, though a succession plan is in the works, with one of his daughters, Shawnee, beginning to take on more responsibility in the running of the business. Her children, Siena and Desmond, are already regular fixtures in the shop, just as Shawnee and her sister Sophie were a generation ago.