Grolier Owner Vows To Stay in Square

The financially imperiled Grolier Poetry Book Shop has shelved plans to close its doors on Plympton Street.

Owner Louisa Solano said earlier this week that she no longer intended to close or sell the store—one of only two all-poetry bookstores in the nation—and would fight to keep it open, “even if my dog and I have to collect.”

Last March, Solano told The Crimson that the store was surviving on a “day-by-day” basis. In June, she said that the store would remain open only until she sold it.

But since then Solano has had a change of heart. She said that support from existing customers, along with her “denial” of the store’s problems had revitalized her interest in the business.

“I am going to stick with it until the bitter end or a happy one,” Solano said on Tuesday, while sitting at her desk among the store’s 15,000 titles. “The store has to exist. It’s not so much about the business but about the value of the word.”

Solano said that she put the store up for sale last year because she thought she might have to declare bankruptcy. She said that she received two offers for the shop, but that both were “way below what the store name was worth.”

Solano said she is putting her retirement money into the store.

“People say I shouldn’t do it but I’d rather be here,” Solano said.

Grolier Poetry Book Shop has struggled over the years as public interest in poetry has waned and as internet book sales have risen.

Last month, WordsWorth Books closed its doors, citing competition from the internet and from The Coop.

“In the past, I said the store was teetering on the brink of closing,” Solano said.

In September 2003, a piano concert was held at Adams House to benefit the store. Solano is a member of the House’s Senior Common Room.

In January, the Boston Globe reported that the store had planned to close in the last week of January but was staying open temporarily until a buyer was found.

Solano said that sales had not increased even as more people had learned about the store’s financial difficulties.

She said people had made it a point of visiting the store after a Boston Globe editorial last February urged readers to shop at the store.

But she said that for the most part the shoppers had not purchased books.

“[People] come in and say we’re sorry [but] they don’t buy books,” Solano said.

Instead, Solano said that she had received help from some patient publishers and from her landlord, Harvard.

“They’ve kept [my rent] reasonable for many years and are not pressing me for owed rent,” she said.

Vicki Macy, assistant to the Adams House masters, said she was “delighted” Grolier would keep its place up Plympton Street.

“Harvard would be ashamed to let it go since it’s their property,” Macy said. “Solano is very generous with the House. She brings poetry into our lives.”

Grolier often holds poetry readings at Adams and also co-hosts monthly poetry readings at the Advocate.

—Staff writer Joseph M. Tartakoff can be reached at tartakof@fas.harvard.edu