A Barnes & Noble was previously located at 150 East 86th Street (Google Maps)
This morning, Barnes & Noble announced that its grand opening at 1556 Third Avenue (corner of 87th Street) will take place on Wednesday, July 19 at 9:00 a.m.
This will mark the return of B & N to the neighborhood after the closure of its previous store at 150 East 86th Street during the summer of 2020.
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The grand opening will include a ribbon-cutting ceremony with author Adriana Trigiani, who will be signing copies of her book, The Good Left Undone.
“The new location showcases the highly lauded bookstore design seen in the most recent Barnes & Noble store openings,” states a press release. “The new bookstore is over 7,000 sq ft across the first floor of this large, corner building.”
“It is very good news to bring our bookstore back to the Upper East Side. It was very sad to close in the depths of the pandemic and [it’s] especially pleasing now to reopen with one that is so dramatically more attractive. We take over a beautiful building with an old-style character with which it is a pleasure to work in creating the new bookstore,” said James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble back in November when they first announced they were returning to the neighborhood.
In March, NPR highlighted Barnes & Noble’s remarkable turnaround as the company now plans to open 30 new stores this year. In several cases, B & N is returning to areas it had previously abandoned, and even taking over a few former Amazon bookshop locations.
Turns out B & N’s biggest strategy change came from taking a page used by independent bookshops. Now, the company is empowering their local Barnes & Noble shops to order books based on the preferences of their local readers.
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It’s “a huge shift, frankly, in philosophy for us as a bookseller,” DeVito says. “It’s not an algorithm. It’s not something that’s dynamically pulled from a code. It’s very much a — I read this, I loved it, I know this area really gravitates towards beekeeping books, so I’m going to create the best beekeeping display I can because this is my local store.”
To stay up to date with Barnes & Noble’s Upper East Side location you can follow them on Instagram here.
Will you be publishing their marketing releases until then?
Will there be a Sales Annex in any of the new stores?