3 of the most beautiful bookstores and libraries to visit in New York
Book-lovers and writers, add these to your itinerary for your next visit to New York City
New York City is one of the most widely-loved and visited places in the world. In 2019, NYC reportedly played host to 66.6 million visitors - making up around 25% of the 265.5 million visiting the USA as a whole - and the love for it is going strong. Despite economic downturns and the rising cost of living being experienced the world over, The Big Apple received nearly 65 million visitors in 2024. That's a heck of a lot of people.
When people think of New York City sights, the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden, Central Park, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Times Square, and the Statue of Liberty are typically among the first that come to mind. The city has been featured in so many books, films, TV shows, and stories of all kinds that it's quite often a character in its own right, and it really does seem to offers something for everyone - if you just know where to find it.
New York City is also known for being the media capital of the world, thanks to the exceptional amount of notable and influential magazines, newspapers, and publishing or media houses there, and the fact that it's home to the Big Five of book publishing. Fun fact: the name "The Big Apple" is also said to have come from the world of the published written word, with some claiming that it was first popularized by a sports writer named John J. Fitz Gerald, and others insisting that its earliest known usage appears in a book by Edward Sandford Martin. If you were to name the two most important cities in the world for the traditional book publishing business, they'd be NYC and London - simply put, New York City and Manhattan are to the written word what Los Angeles and Hollywood are for the silver screen.
So it's only natural that many literature-lovers of all kinds will find themselves drawn to the city at some point or other. And if you're among them, the next time you visit, you might want to put these epic libraries and/or bookstores on your list.
1. The Morgan Library & Museum
Found in Manhattan's Murray Hill neighborhood not too far from Grand Central and Penn Station - within comfortable walking distance of Times Square - this stunning place is the former private library of J. Pierpoint Morgan - yes, as in the financier and investment banker behind the company J.P. Morgan. The building itself is a curious journey through time. From the outside it's a classic New York building. When you walk in, you're left a little surprised by how modern it is, with its minimalistic white walls and large glass panes. There's a cafe and garden within the museum, which is also fairly modern. And then you walk into the library, and boom: it's a step back in time.
If you have the time and love art, the museum houses both permanent and changing art exhibits. But for a book-lover, it's Pierpont Morgan's Study and Historic Library that'll make you squeal.
Upon walking in, the first thing that’ll strike you is the red silk damask wall. This was inspired by the design of the Roman villa of Agostino Chigi - an Italian banker and patron of the Renaissance, and the son of another prominent banker (yes, a nepo baby) - and the walls of the Morgan study feature the Chigi coat of arms, along with an eight-pointed star and mountain formation. The silk was imported from Italy, where it had once decorated the banking family’s palace. The antique wooden ceiling also came from Italy, before it was flown over to the States and reassembled to fit the room. It was antiqued with coats of arms featured on Renaissance bookplates. The windows feature panels of beautiful stained glass from the 15th to 17th century, taken from churches and monasteries in Switzerland. From the grand fireplace - adorned with bronzed fire-dogs and kneeling angel candelabra - to the custom-made desk, desk chair, and settee, which were created in 1906.
When you’re done exploring the study, make your way to The Library. This jaw-droppingly beautiful room is reminiscent of the one in Beauty and the Beast, with bookshelves that go all the way up to its painted 30-foot-high ceilings, made of bronze and inlaid with Circassian walnut. The balcony levels, accessed by two corner staircases hidden behind bookcases, incorporate a pair of casement windows with fragments of stained glass. The grand mantlepiece above its fireplace is made of Istrian marble, and it’s topped by a tapestery - The Triumph of Avarice. On the ceiling, you’ll see more artwork, including a series of muses and their attributes, and depictions of the constellations and zodiacal signs arranged in a way that was personally meaningful to Morgan.
Inside the library you’ll find a copy of the original Declaration of Independence (one of only 23 in the world), a score of the Haffner Symphony handwritten by Mozart, and the only extant partial manuscript of Milton's Paradise Lost. In the adjacent North Room, you’ll find a collection of antiquities from Western Asia, Greece, and Rome, from clay tablets adorned with cuneiform text to jewellery. It’s regal, it’s a treasure trove, and it is truly a symbol of the Age of Elegance.
Admission to the historic rooms is free on Tuesdays and Sundays from 3-5pm, and reservations aren’t required for those hours. Otherwise, you can buy a ticket on the website, for US$25 per adult, US$17 per senior (65 and older), US$ for students (with a valid, current ID), or free for children 12 and under (accompanied by an adult).
2. Albertine
This stunning reading room and bookshop celebrates French literature and the “French-American intellectual exchange.” The bookstore opened in 2014, and it offers the largest collection of French-language books available in the United States. Located in a mansion on Fifth Avenue, stepping in here feels like going through a portal to another time and place. The Payne Whitney Mansion is one of the last buildings from the Gilded Age, and when you walk in, you’ll be welcomed by a rotunda with a marble statue of a youth atop a fountain. There are a series of interesting rooms in the mansion - including a Venetian room, The Marble Room and Ballroom, and a historic studio on the fifth floor, built for Mrs. Whitney and where she would write poems and children’s books - and a garden. The bookshop is on the ground floor, past the statue.
The shop has more than 14,000 books from French-speaking countries, and I was delighted to find everything from French editions of children’s picture books that I loved as a kid - including the Barbapapas and Harry Potter - as well as works from Albert Camus, Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Voltaire, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, Simone de Beauvoir, and plenty of contemporary authors alongside the Rousseaus, the Balzacs, the Zolas, and so on.
But the biggest draw of this place is probably its gorgeous ceiling. Featuring a celestial theme, this beautiful work of art was created as a project by the CUltural Services of the French Embassy, and painted in the style of a Renaissance fresco. It’s an incredibly peaceful place, and if there is a French or Francophone book you’d like that they don’t have, the staff can order it for you, if you’re around to receive the delivery. Alas, I wasn’t staying in the city long enough to get the copy of François de La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims that I was after, but I’ll revisit for this next time!
3. Argosy
A haven for old and rare books, this family-owned book store is as beautiful as it is fun to explore. Located in midtown, Manhattan (with a warehouse in Brooklyn), the shop “specialize[s] in Americana, modern first editions, autographs, art, antique maps & prints, and the history of science & medicine.” Inside, you’ll find a treasure trove of literary delights, from old, rare, and out-of-print books (on all subjects) - including first, limited, and signed editions - as well as antique maps and atlases; autographed books, photographs, and letters; and posters, both antique and as print replicas.
It’s a quiet place - you don’t want to go in like a bull in a china shop. On its main/ground floor, the warm yellow lighting and creaky wooden floors add a lot of ambiance, and its green lamps immediately call to mind the ones seen at the iconic New York Public Library. (Fun fact: these are called banker’s lamps). There isn’t a dedicated reading area in the shop, but there are a few stools and small chairs that you can sit on here and there, if you’d like to sit down and thumb through something. To see the most rare, collectible items (including those protected from grubby fingertips with page-damaging oils), there’s a second level upstairs. Then in the basement, you’ll find their biggest range, containing shelf after shelf of books in a wide variety of genres. It would be easy to spend hours lost in there, and I did.
Lest you think that everything here would be obscenely expensive, it’s not: while, of course, the most rare and collectible items will come at a pretty penny, the shop often has sales on the “normal” books on its basement level, and outside the storefront, you’ll find stacks of books wherein almost all (if not all) of the books on display are just US$10. It’s not the sort of place that you’ll go to to grab the latest shiny new darling of commercial or genre fiction, but if you’re looking to get lost in a place that feels like a quintessential old-time New York bookstore, perhaps on a rainy day (which was literally the case when I visited), then it’s well worth a visit.
