Cold rain tapped sporadically on the pavement under the elevated tracks on Wabash. It was perfect bookstore weather. Gray skies and wet streets are supposed to have the same effect on bookstores that the full moon has on psych wards. But few people were in the old Kroch’s & Brentano’s last Thursday, when the remaining bits and pieces of the venerable bookstore were sold at auction.
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In slick hair and purple-tinted glasses, the auctioneer sat on a raised stool on a cart–buyers followed him as he drove around the store from lot to lot. He kept the proceedings moving, talking fast and loose and fluid. He talked up coffeepots, clocks, a crappy swivel chair, a pretty good swivel chair, a box full of horoscope scrolls, posters. “Let me hear ya, let me hear ya, let me hear ya. Look at me, look at me, look at me…”
The stuff that had already come up for sale–and it all sold–was junk. But to at least a few booksellers, the junk had meaning. It was Kroch’s & Brentano’s junk, and at one time Kroch’s & Brentano’s had meant something. According to writer Henry Regnery, Kroch’s & Brentano’s can be traced back to one of the earliest bookstores in Chicago, W.W. Barlow & Co., which was founded in 1844.
“So, what am I bid for all of them?”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Bruce Powell.
