The Grolier Book Shop

In every old grad's log of college lore is a group of stories about the shops along Massachusetts Avenue and its one-way tributaries. A random few recall the laundry establishments; others various coffee shops, but in the Harvard reminiscences of many contemporary writers and poets, the Grolier book-store on Plympton Street crops up an unusual number of times.

Conrad Aiken, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, is an example. He was first attracted to Grolier's by the usual assortment of esoteric books pyramided in the window. He became a regular visitor, and soon formed a literary friendship with Gordon C. Cairne, the shop's proprietor. In his autobiography Aiken speaks of his visits to the Grolier as some of the most refreshing moments spent in the Square. Joseph Alsop, New York Herald Tribune columnist, spent his undergraduate hours slouched in the shop's overstuffed sofa. Cairnic remembers him as "one of the fattest Freshmen ever to enter Harvard." T. S. Eliot was surrounded by querying students the first time he entered the shop. He answered a few of their questions and scurried out of the shop alluding to an appointment.

Named after a famous 16th century Italian bookbinder, Grolier was established, in 1927, because Cairnie found himself with too many books. As a grad student in landscape architecture, he accumulated a library of 2,800 volumes and, in his second year of work at Harvard, decided to give up his formal education and enter the book business.

The shop grew slowly in stock but not in size, and in 1945 just after Wake Magazine published a special issue on E.E. Cummings, Theodore Spencer came into the Grolier. Spencer wanted to continue the interest in Cummings stimulated by the Wake issue with an exhibition of the lower case poet's paintings. Rather than show the art works in one of the Houses, Spencer wanted to use the bookstore, Cairnic consented and for a week the tawny walls and long rows of closely-packed books were hidden by Cummings' impressionistic works.

Little has changed in the store since the exhibition. The position of the books has shifted somewhat and the dust on the walls has certainly increased but essentially the Grolier is the same as when it opened in 1927.