Wednesday, November 7, 2007

O'Gara and Wilson Antiquarian Booksellers

1448 E. 57th St. Opened in 1886, it is Chicago's oldest bookstore. Specializing in rare and antique books, the store also sells quirky old oddments such as photographs, sheet music, vintage postcards, exotic marriage urns (?) and the like, none of which can be found most anywhere else. Even their blog is a good read...

9 comments:

  1. Beautiful collection of books (I'd like to get my hands on that Russian Folk Art!) and what lovely handwriting on those signs (typing has ruined mine...).

    ReplyDelete
  2. Interesting blog post. I like it.

    I have been working on my website trying to add a few things at a time. I just added horses. The link is below if you are interested.

    oldmanlincoln.com

    ReplyDelete
  3. As soon as you find out what an exotic marriage urn is, please tell us! And be sure to post a picture.

    I imagine this container as something my wife and my ashes could be mixed in for eternity. Bizarre, but we wouldn't care at that point.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great pictures. I love old bookstores. Interestingly, I found a few old postcards of Boston's Tremont Street in a Chicago book store a few years ago. I framed them and have them on my office wall.

    I would guess that the store does not use any computers and that is why the hand written signs.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I just realized that I never answered your question about the Mystic River (sorry about that!). Indeed, it's the same river as in Clint Eastwood's movie.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Looks like a great place to browse, I'll have to check it out when we get back to chi-town.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thank you, Fenix, Abe, Clueless, StlouisMo, and R&R! I will have to lurk about to take more photos of the exotic whadayacallits that they have strewn about their display one day...and indeed, it is a great place to browse...r&r, you must definitely stop by and say hello when you are back in town!

    Thanks, Fenix for the answer to the mystic question..

    ReplyDelete
  8. Oh boy! I love books. This shop would be right up my alley!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hi! I'm Lydia ... I work at O'Gara and Wilson, and I mostly do the store blog. Thanks for the complimentary blog post!

    The store signs are handwritten because I like to do calligraphy. :) When/if I leave, many of them may go back to being typewritten -- we do use computers here, as you can see from our store blog: [ http://ogarawilsonbooksellers.blogspot.com/ ]

    ReplyDelete