It’s only a short ride to the library and as I step out of the station I pass the newsagents already selling the Sunday paper. Entering the grand building I always get excited about the treasures hidden below the surface. Millions of books are stored here and all of them tell their stories. I want to know more about the historic publisher’s building. In the catalogue room I stumble upon the old card catalogues. I browse through all the keywords leading me to titles and their call numbers. I navigate through old street directories to find businesses located on Book Lane. These names I look up again and find more entries. Soon I have a pile of call slips I carry to the reading room. After I give them my slips the machinery starts. Below me is a huge iron grid of stacks with dozens of levels, and the books are stored there by their call number. In this maze the pages know their way around to find the books I’m looking for. My books are ready and I start browsing through them I learn about the building being the first fire-proof in the city and the role iron played in its design. In one small octavo I find memories of book lane in the 1920s, another box is full of maps of the area. All the print shops are marked in it, also places like type foundries, book binders and paper suppliers. In a collection of letters between an author and a publisher I recognise the places they met and I decide to go there soon, walking along the routes of book production. On the shelf is a folio about the city’s libraries with a portrait of the branch I have the novel from. Back in the days the librarian was part of a circle of writers and artists making their neighbourhood famous, while the library doesn’t exist anymore its books are still circulating in the city. As the library closes for tonight I step outside and pass the lions on my way to the station. I’m excited to go on a journey and my train leaves in 30 minutes. In the station store I see the new book on my neighbourhood and take it with me and I think about how I always carry books around town as they are like conversations with a friends. In the train I doze and dream about all the cities I walked, the buildings I visited and how all places tell the stories of the people who built them and the people I met told me their stories and the cities write their books and the books build their cities and how I long to see the city again. c
Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, BOITE FOL-HD-1176 (1)
Louis-Émile Durandelle: Library stacks of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1888
Jacob Abbott: The Harper establishment; or, How the story books are made. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1855
E. Doppler: Franklin Square Front, 1855
Thomas Kohlwein is a writer and editor exploring the relationship between architecture and literature. Researching publishing and library history from an urban perspective, his latest publications include literary anthologies about North America and Hong Kong.
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