Eulogy for a Bookstore

By Laura M. Browning in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 15, 2010 9:40PM

We can already hear the cries of the Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Hyde Park. To be fair, it’s probably putting on its best Monty Python voice and saying, “But I’m not dead yet!” But in late 2011 or early 2012, the beloved University of Chicago bookstore will move one block east to what General Manager Jack Cella calls “a dramatically better space.” The firm of Tigerman McCurry Architects (Holocaust Museum, Skokie; The Chicago Bar Association) will design the new store, working closely with Cella and a University of Chicago architect/project manager.

In an email to members, Cella wrote: “The new store will have windows (imagine that!), will be completely accessible, and will have operational temperature and air circulation controls. We may bring a pipe along for the occasional customer who feels nostalgic for a place to bump his or her head.”

To anybody who has nearly fainted from the heat, buried deep in the Sem Co-op’s labyrinthine basement, wondering if their body will ever be found under the pile of books from the Critical Social Theory & Marxism section*, those temperature and air circulation controls do sound pretty great. So why are we prematurely mourning its death?

The short answer to this is: go visit. It’s at 5757 S. University, and you’ll have to check your bag with a guard in the outer lobby or with a clerk inside. Trust us, there’s not room for both you and it, anyway. Walk down a short but steep staircase and wipe the first bead of sweat from your brow. And then we strongly recommend embracing your inner nerd—after all, this is a bookstore where the clerks have probably read the entire philosophy section or are experts in French political theory. If you’re claustrophobic, take a deep breath before you plunge into the labyrinth of crudely built bookshelves stocked floor to ceiling. Some of the narrow passages open into large, sunken rooms, and you’ll start to feel like you’ll never make it out of this place. But in a good way. Sure, there aren’t big comfy chairs like at the nearby Borders, but we don’t think you’ll mind. It's a bookstore of yesteryear, the kind you didn't know still existed.

The new bookstore may well be a dramatically better space, but it’s just not going to be the same Sem Co-op. You still have a year to experience the current store, and we suggest you don’t waste your time. Pick us up the latest Habermas biography, will you?

*Yes, the Sem Co-op really does have an entire section called Critical Social Theory & Marxism.