A Neighborhood Bookstore Celebrates 50 Years With a Block Party

Corner Pages Books opened in 1976 with 2,000 used paperbacks. On Saturday it turns 50 with a block party for the whole neighborhood. The shop, a narrow brick storefront with a green awning and a bell that rings every time the door opens, has become one of the most familiar landmarks on its block, a place where generations of readers have bought their first chapter books, their college textbooks and the novels they still reread every summer.

Owner Margaret Lewis bought the shop from its founder in 2004 and has kept it going through two recessions and the rise of online retail. This weekend, she and her staff plan to close the street to traffic, set up tables of discounted books, invite local musicians and authors, and thank the neighbors who have kept the doors open for half a century.

Fifty years on one corner

Corner Pages was founded by Harold Finch, a former high school English teacher who started the business with a small inheritance and his own book collection. The first shop was barely bigger than a closet, and Finch ran it alone, buying used paperbacks at estate sales and garage sales and selling them for a quarter each. Within a few years, he had expanded into the space next door and added new books to the shelves.

By the 1990s, Corner Pages had become a neighborhood institution. Finch hosted poetry readings on Thursday nights, ran a children’s story hour on Saturday mornings and kept a cat named Dickens who slept in the front window. Longtime customers still talk about his handwritten recommendation cards, tucked into books he thought deserved more attention.

When Finch decided to retire, he put the word out that he wanted to sell the shop to someone who would keep it going rather than turn it into something else. Margaret Lewis, a regular customer who worked as a librarian, answered the call.

How the shop survived

Lewis took over just a few years before the 2008 recession, and she remembers the early years as a constant scramble. Sales dropped, rent went up and online retailers were offering many of the same books for less than she could buy them wholesale. Independent bookstores across the country were closing, and more than one friend told her she should get out while she could.

Instead, she leaned into what a small shop could do that a website could not. She expanded the used book section, started a busy schedule of events and built a team of booksellers who knew their customers by name. She launched book clubs for teens, retirees and mystery lovers, and partnered with local schools to supply classroom libraries.

A bookstore is a place to bump into ideas you weren’t looking for. You can’t get that from an algorithm.

Margaret Lewis, owner

Lewis said the shop has survived largely because of its neighbors. During the second recession and again during a difficult stretch a few years ago, customers organized “buy a book” days, prepaid for gift cards and volunteered to help with events. “There were months when I didn’t know how we would make rent,” she said. “And every time, this neighborhood showed up.”

What has kept Corner Pages going

• A large used book section that keeps prices affordable
• Book clubs for teens, retirees and mystery fans
• Readings and signings with local and regional authors
• Partnerships with nearby schools and libraries
• Booksellers who know their regulars and their reading tastes

The block party

Saturday’s celebration will run from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., with the block in front of the shop closed to cars for the day. Visitors can expect live music, a used book sale, readings by local authors and plenty of food from neighboring businesses.

The used book sale will feature thousands of titles at $1 to $3 each, with all proceeds going to the public library’s children’s reading program. Local authors, including a mystery novelist, a poet and the author of a popular picture book series, will read from their work throughout the afternoon. A folk trio and a high school jazz band will perform, and the bakery next door is making a cake large enough to feed the whole block.

There will also be a children’s corner with face painting, a reading tent and a contest to design a new bookmark for the shop. The winning design will be printed and given away with every purchase for the next year.

Key takeaway: The Corner Pages block party runs Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., with music, author readings, a children’s corner and a used book sale benefiting the public library’s children’s reading program.

Memories from the shelves

Ahead of the anniversary, Lewis invited customers to share their memories of the shop on index cards pinned to a corkboard by the register. Within two weeks, the board was covered.

One customer wrote about buying her first book with her own allowance money at age eight. Another described meeting his future wife in the poetry section in 1989. A retired teacher remembered Harold Finch giving her a box of free paperbacks for her classroom. Several people wrote simply that the shop had been a refuge during hard times.

Some of the cards came from people who had moved away years ago. A woman now living in Oregon mailed a postcard recalling the rainy afternoon she spent hiding in the shop’s back corner reading a whole novel before her mother picked her up. A former employee wrote that working the register during college taught her more about people than any class she took. Lewis said she reads a few cards every morning before opening.

Staff members have their own favorites. Bookseller Nora Feldman, who has worked at the shop for twelve years, said one card from a young father moved her to tears. He wrote that he had read every bedtime story to his daughter from books bought at Corner Pages, the same way his own father had read to him. “That’s three generations of one family on our shelves,” Feldman said. “You don’t forget something like that.”

David Romero, who has shopped at Corner Pages since he was a teenager, said he still visits every Saturday morning. “I’ve bought hundreds of books here,” he said. “But mostly I come for the conversation. Margaret always knows what I should read next, and she’s usually right.”

The next chapter

Lewis, now in her 60s, said she has no plans to retire soon, but she has started thinking about the shop’s future. Two of her longtime booksellers have expressed interest in taking over one day, and she hopes to keep the business in the hands of people who love it as much as she does.

In the meantime, she plans to keep doing what has worked: stocking good books, hosting events and making the shop a place where neighbors feel at home. She recently added a small coffee bar near the back and is planning a series of writing workshops for adults next year.

“Fifty years is a long time for any small business,” Lewis said. “For a bookstore, it feels like a small miracle. But it’s not really a miracle. It’s a neighborhood that decided this place was worth keeping. Saturday is our way of saying thank you.”