Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest bookseller, is closing a chapter on what has been a mainstay of City Center in White Plains.
The e-book and print retailer – which pioneered both the superstore and the concept store, featuring blond-wood aesthetics, comfortable seating environments, dining options and author experiences – will shutter the White Plains locale on April 20.
“We have loved being a part of the neighborhood and it has been our honor and privilege to serve here for the last 20 years,” spokeswoman Janine Flanigan said in a statement. “We have three wonderful nearby stores we invite customers to visit, once this location is closed.”
Indeed, there are Barnes & Nobles in Eastchester (a concept store with a dining area in the Vernon Hills Shopping Center’s former Alex & Henry’s restaurant): Hartsdale and Yonkers (both in shopping centers on Central Avenue); and Mount Kisco (which opened Nov. 16); as well as at Mohegan Lake’s Cortlandt Town Center; The Palisades Center in West Nyack; Nanuet’s Rockland Plaza; Danbury Fair; Milford Crossing; and Stamford Town Center, with three new Connecticut stores set to open this year. They are a roughly 25,000-square-foot store with café at Stamford’s High Ridge Shopping Center (May 14), an approximately 9,500-square-foot space at Southbury Green (June 4) and an estimated 18,000-square-foot store with café at The Shops at Stone Bridge in Cheshire (Sept. 17).
The upcoming Connecticut stores are among the more than 60 the company has said it will open this year, thanks to a pandemic-era resurgence of readership fueled in part by TikTok’s BookTok community of influencers, which has more than 309 billion views and has made a sensation of authors like Colleen Hoover, helping to sell approximately 40 million print books in 2022 alone.
With about 600 stores nationwide and a strong online presence, Barnes & Noble sells more than 190 million physical books a year and is the largest retailer of publications, carrying about 3,000 magazine titles and more than 400 newspaper titles.
While Barnes & Noble, which became a publicly traded company in 1993, was acquired in August 2019 by Elliott Advisors (UK) Limited (“Elliott”) – owner of Waterstones, the largest retail bookseller in the United Kingdom — and taken private, it actually began its life in Wheaton, Illinois, in 1873. That’s when Charles M. Barnes started a book business from his home. In 1917, his son, William, teamed with G. Clifford Noble to establish Barnes & Noble in Manhattan, where during the Great Depression, they opened what was to become the flagship on Fifth Avenue at 18th Street.
In 1971, bookseller Leonard Riggio acquired the Barnes & Noble trade name and flagship to create “The World’s Largest Bookstore,” with 150,000 textbook and trade titles. Over the last 50 years as its fortunes have waned and waxed, B & N has not only survived but thrived, acquiring B. Dalton Bookseller’s 797 stores, Doubleday Book Shops, the rights to the Scribner’s bookstore trade name, BookStop, the SparkNotes.com study aids website, Sterling Publishing and the Borders and Waldenbooks brands.
In 2009, the company entered the e-book market with its acquisition of Fictionwise and launched its Nook brand of e-reading products, introducing several devices in the tablet and e-reader categories over the last several years.
It remains to be seen what will replace Barnes & Nobles at City Center White Plains, where the bookseller has been an anchor along with Burlington Coat Factory, Nordstrom Rack, ShopRite andTarget.
But as the Greek philosopher Aristotle noted, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” So do shopping centers. The City Center 15: Cinema de Lux has been replaced by Apple Cinemas. Who knows what awaits?
