There is a particular kind of New York bookstore that makes you forget what time it is. You walk in, you tilt your head ninety degrees to read a row of cracked spines, and the next time you check your phone an hour has gone missing. Westsider Rare & Used Books, at 2246 Broadway between West 80th and 81st on the Upper West Side, is the platonic ideal of that bookstore. It has been pulling that trick on book people since 1971.
Let me show you why it works.
The Building Tells You What to Expect
Westsider is one of the narrowest commercial storefronts on Broadway, sandwiched between bigger shops, with a small Westsider sign and a window full of books that have clearly been arranged by someone who reads. The store is tall — three stories of books, including a rare-book room reached by a narrow stairway in the middle of the floor — and packed in a way that makes you immediately understand the place was built by people, not by algorithms.
The store carries roughly fifty thousand titles. Used hardcovers and paperbacks of classic literary fiction. A serious mystery section. Cookbooks for the kind of cook who actually owns a stockpot. Art and photography volumes, some of them oversize. French-language books for the West End Avenue grandmothers who still remember their schoolgirl years in Paris. A children’s section. Used vinyl and CDs along one wall, because Westsider was that kind of place before it was cool to be that kind of place again.
How It Got Here
The Upper West Side used to be lined with bookstores. Shakespeare & Co. ran for decades up at 81st and Broadway. Murder Ink, the mystery shop, lived on Broadway too. Endicott Booksellers was an institution. Most of them are gone — closed by rents, by Amazon, by the slow grind of a city that does not always protect its small things. Westsider, founded in 1971, is one of the last survivors of that golden age.
It has come close to losing the fight more than once. The community has rallied around the store during rough stretches with crowdfunding and old-fashioned word of mouth, and the staff has stayed, and the books have kept moving. As of this season the shop is open seven days a week, which is the kind of detail that tells you everything you need to know about how the place feels about its neighborhood. Most used bookstores are dark by Sunday afternoon. Westsider keeps the lights on.
What You Will Actually Find on the Shelves
The fiction section is dense and well sorted, with a strong mid-century American spine that includes a lot of the writers New York readers actually still read — Cheever, Roth, Didion, Baldwin, Renata Adler. The poetry section is small but smart. The philosophy section runs deep enough that academics use the store as a hunting ground.
The real magic, though, is upstairs. The rare-book room — up a narrow flight of stairs in the middle of the shop — holds signed first editions, eccentric out-of-print titles, and the kind of finds that make collectors quietly lose their minds. Signed Updike. Old New York histories with dust jackets intact. The occasional weird and wonderful piece of Americana. If you are a serious collector, you will want to ask the staff what they have set aside that is not on the shelves yet. They almost always have something.
And then there is the music. Westsider sells used vinyl and CDs along with the books, and the records section is exactly as much fun as you want it to be. It is not a record store with delusions of grandeur. It is a bookstore that happens to have records, and the prices are kind.
The Atmosphere
The aisles are narrow. The lighting is warm. The floors creak in a few places. Somebody is almost always reading the back of a book. The staff — small, knowledgeable, unhurried — will help if you ask and leave you alone if you do not. There is no piped-in playlist. There is no cafe. There is nobody trying to sell you a tote bag. There are only books, in stacks, in alphabetical order, with the kind of confidence that comes from doing one thing well for more than fifty years.
If you live on the Upper West Side, you have probably stopped in already. If you do not, this is the kind of bookstore that justifies an afternoon walk through Riverside Park and a coffee at Joe across the street before you wander in.
How to Visit
Where: 2246 Broadway, between West 80th and West 81st Streets, Upper West Side, Manhattan.
Hours: Open seven days a week. Daily hours are roughly 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. — call ahead at (212) 362-0706 if you are coming on a holiday or right at opening or closing.
Nearest subway: 79th Street on the 1 train, half a block south. The 86th Street stop on the 1 is also walkable, as is the B and C at 81st Street/Museum of Natural History a few blocks east.
Cost: Free to browse. Used paperbacks frequently sit in the single digits. Hardcovers vary. Rare-room prices reflect what you would expect from a serious antiquarian shop — fair, but not flea-market cheap.
Cash or card: Both accepted.
Pairs well with: A walk through Riverside Park, a stop at Zabar’s on Broadway and 80th, or an afternoon at the American Museum of Natural History a few blocks east.
Insider Tip: Do not skip the upstairs rare-book room, even if you have no intention of buying anything in it. Climb the stairs, take the place in, and ask whoever is working what just came in. Westsider buys collections on a regular basis, which means the inventory in the back rooms moves faster than what is on the floor. The good stuff often sells within days. If you ask, and you are friendly about it, you will sometimes get to see things that have not been priced yet.
Why Westsider Still Matters
A used bookstore is a strange kind of public service. It is a place where books move sideways instead of out, where somebody else’s old copy becomes yours, where the prices are set by a human who is mostly trying to make rent. New York used to have hundreds of these. It now has dozens. Westsider is one of the great ones, and it has stayed great by being exactly what it has always been — narrow, tall, packed, friendly, and open when other places are closed.
If you love books, you should go. If you love New York, you should go. Pick a slow afternoon, take the 1 train to 79th, walk one block north, and push open the door. The hour you lose in there will be one of the better hours of your week.
