Drama Book Shop: The Revival

 

In 2017, the famous and beloved—especially among stage folk and fans of the theater—Drama Book Shop celebrated its 100th birthday.  (Some newspaper accounts found during the run-up to the centennial indicated that the theater bookseller may actually have been started in 1916, but that’s an argument for another moment.) 

The celebration might have been short-lived, however.  On 24 October 2018, Allen Hubby (b. 1957), the store’s vice president, announced that an untenable rent hike (from $20,000 a month to $30,000) would force the venerable theater district institution to abandon its location at 250 W. 40th Street (between 7th and 8th Avenues) and look for other, more affordable premises.  It planned to close the 40th street location on 20 January 2019—after marking DBS’s century on 2 October 2017, which was the birthday of Arthur Seelen (1923-2000), the book store’s owner from 1958 to his death.

Almost immediately, however, actor-playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda stepped up.  On 18 January 2019, the New York Times announced that Miranda, the author of the smash 2015 Broadway hit Hamilton, and his collaborators Thomas Kail, Hamilton’s director; Jeffrey Seller, the show’s lead producer; and James L. Nederlander, the president of the Nederlander Organization, which runs the Richard Rodgers Theatre where Hamilton is playing, would be buying DBS from its previous owner, Rozanne Seelen (b. ca. 1935), Arthur’s business partner and widow.

The deal was a partnership with the city of New York, which promised to help the four new owners find a suitable storefront for DBS.  Apparently it has: the iconic bookseller reopened at 266 W. 39th Street, a little west of 8th Avenue, on Thursday, 10 June.

The Drama Book Shop, the oldest bookstore dedicated to the performing arts in the U.S., was founded in 1923 (unofficially in 1916 or ’17 as an ad hoc bookseller in theater lobbies, operated by the Drama League) by Marjorie Seligman.  Under the Drama League, it occupied space at 29 W. 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, the League’s New York City headquarters.

Arthur Seelen (born Seelenfreund in Brooklyn), a former actor who died at age 76, bought the bookstore in 1958; Rozanne Seelen (née Ritch), a former dancer originally from San Antonio, was an employee and then Arthur’s wife.  The couple married in 1980, after Ritch had worked at the store for several years. 

Seligman bought the shop and moved it to a brownstone at 48 W. 52nd Street.  It stayed there until the late 1950s; Seligman retired in 1956 and then sold the shop to Arthur Seelen in 1958.  Seelen moved it to 150 W. 52nd Street—across the street from Joe's Pier 52, a restaurant that was a watering hole for theater people and the celebrity friends of owner Joe Kipness (1911-82), a theatrical producer.

DBS was located on the fourth and fifth floors of the building until 1983, and that’s where it was when I got to New York in the mid-’70s.  There was no display window at street level, no posters or ads.  The entrance led you to a creaky, cramped, and tattered old elevator that took you to the fifth floor where the selling floor was.  Just like the elevator, the shop was unpretty, even a little grimy, no décor or amenities.  No one cared.  If you were addicted to theater, this was your opium den.

Crammed with books on every aspect of theater—the last count was 20,000 titles in stock—with sections devoted to film and television and even radio, the place was crowded with people.  Some were browsing the floor-to-ceiling shelves of books, looking for specific titles or just looking for something that fit their need.  Many people were seated on the floor, reading.  

Of course, there were scripts—thousands of them, mostly acting editions from Samuel French and Dramatist Play Service with their pastel-colored covers.  DBS had almost any play or musical libretto you could think of if it had been published.  If they didn’t have one and it was available, they’d get it for you. 

The store also did a big mail-order business—there wasn’t (and isn’t) any other place like the Drama Book Shop anywhere in the country . . . anywhere in the world, so people came to them for play texts and theater books they couldn’t get at home.  There were always dozens of packages of wrapped books on the sales counter, waiting to be mailed to customers far away.

Most of the customers were—are—theater people, theater students, or theater teachers.  (Look around and you might catch a glimpse of a real theater liminary.  In years past, such stars as Marilyn Monroe, José Ferrer, Katharine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich, Bette Midler, Ellen Burstyn, Alan Cumming, John Lithgow, Kevin Kline, and Cher have shopped at DBS.)

Most customers are looking for something specific, but some come to see what’s available that might meet the need for an audition monologue, a classroom scene, or a school play.  I often did all of those things there when I was a student in the ’70s and ’80s, a wannabee actor in the ’80s, and a theater teacher in the ’80s and ’90s.

I was in the Times Square area often for auditions and when there was time between sessions, I used the Drama Book Shop as a place to hang out and look for scripts.  For theater people, DBS was the equivalent of a candy store or a toy store to little kids. 

In 1983, the book shop moved again.  Its new home was 723 7th Avenue between 48th and 49th Street, just north of Times Square.  I shopped here, too.  Not as often as I did at 150 W. 52nd, but I was in grad school at New York University’s Department of Performance Studies at this time (1983-86), and though I didn’t need scripts like I had 10 years earlier, there were other theater books I needed.

Arthur Seelen died in 2000 and in November 2001, DBS moved again.  After a short hiatus, it reopened at 250 W. 40th Street in December 2001.  After Seelen’s death, his widow asked Hubby, her nephew and another former dancer who’d been Seelen’s assistant, to become co-owner.

After DBS moved to its 40th Street location in 2001, Hubby opened a 50-seat black-box theater in the basement.  It was named for Arthur Seelen and Lin-Manuel Miranda developed his 2008 Tony-winning musical In the Heights there.  In 2011, DBS itself received a Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre.  (Where else but in New York could a book store win a Tony?)

I patronized the West 40th Street store occasionally, too.  My friend Kirk Woodward (whom ROTters will know from his many contributions to this blog) worked in an office on 8th Avenue near Penn Station.  We had lunch together semi-regularly, and afterwards, I sometimes walked to the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at 5th Avenue and 42nd Street. 

Since I’d pass right near the Drama Book Shop, I’d sometimes stop in either to browse or to look for a book I wanted.  (By this time, of course, DBS, like most other retailers, had a website and I could look up books for which I was looking and even order them in advance of my visit.)  Regardless, a trip to DBS always meant a surf through the shelves and display tables.

I was devastated when I read two-and-a-half years ago that the Drama Book Shop would be closing.  I hadn’t been going there much—Kirk retired from his job, so we didn’t have lunch together anymore—but I did use the website now and then.  But I still felt as if I were losing an old friend whom I didn’t see much anymore, but would still miss being able to see or call up or e-mail occasionally.  DBS, like the Library for the Performing Arts, had been very important to me at a significant time in my life.

I had a suspicion, though, that someone wouldn’t let such a theater icon disappear.  (Okay, maybe it was more a wish than a suspicion.  You got me!)  And now a knightly foursome has come out of the mist and saved the foundering DBS.  What could be more theatrical?

It's not surprising that these four have done this deed.  Miranda, as I’ve reported, wrote his first hit (just now being released as a movie!) in the store.  He also was one of those play-readers on the floor of the bookstore—some 20 years after I went there regularly.  (I frequented the West 52nd Street shop; he did his reading at the 7th Avenue location.)

Miranda has helped the Drama Book Shop before as well.  In 2016, a pipe burst, flooding the shop and damaging merchandise.  The playwright urged his fans to patronize the store and to entice them, he signed every book with his name on it.  The store sold out in an hour.

Kail directed not only Hamilton, but also In the Heights, so he and Miranda had worked together in the store and the Arthur Seelen Theater.  Furthermore, Kail had a theater company after college, Back House Productions, which was in residence in the Seelen for the first five years of his career.  He considers that experience his professional sipapu.

Seller, the producer, will be managing the store and has already made plans to redesign the DBS website and to expand the bookseller’s in-store programs.  A fifth member of the Hamilton team, David Korins, who designed the show’s sets, has also designed the new store, which has the look and feel of a French café.  The new DBS will also sell pastries and coffee in the hope that the store will once again become a hang-out for artists and theater enthusiasts.

The space is decorated with art spotlighting the theater’s greatest shows, and Korins has created a spectacular centerpiece for the store’s opening.  He’s used 2,500 books to fashion a 140-foot-long, literal book worm weighing 3,500 pounds suspended from the ceiling and snaking around the room.  There are also a pair of replicas of George Washington’s armchair from Hamilton placed at small tables where readers (or coffee drinkers) can sit.

The new DBS is open daily, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.-8 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; and Sunday, 12 n.-6 p.m.  Capacity is limited to 40 people at a time, and a timed-entry reservation system has been implemented.  Reservations, however, aren’t required, but they are recommended; patrons can also wait in line to enter. 

Be advised that masks are required at all times while inside the store, regardless of vaccination status.  If you forget, DBS has a limited supply available.  To ensure safe shopping, patrons are requested to maintain social distancing.  Hand sanitizer stations are placed throughout the store for shoppers’ convenience, while high-touch surfaces are disinfected regularly and the store receives a deep cleaning each night.

The Drama Book Shop’s website is https://www.dramabookshop.com/ and its e-mail is info@dramabookshop.com; the telephone number is (212) 944-0595.