A photo essay.
Unlike the wooded lands that surround it, Whitlock’s Book Barn, established in Bethany since 1948, is leafy year-round. Sellers leave interesting used books and other oddities behind, their pockets a little heavier; buyers leaf through them, their pockets soon a little lighter.
“Little” is an important word here. “Buy low, sell low” is the mantra by which founder Gilbert Whitlock—“a yankee through and through,” store manager Meg Turner says, by which she means he was extremely frugal—ran his business. Mr. Whitlock’s approach, good for keeping inventory and cash flowing, has continued in the years since he passed away, though some items, like a rare early printing of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring, spotted among the stacks some years ago, command an appropriately hefty price.
While a maze of aisles and shelves holds rows and rows of fiction in every major genre, including a section for first editions and signed copies, Turner says the shop’s bread and butter is nonfiction, particularly history. That sensibility extends from a healthy local history section to the angle-peaked “prints and maps” room (just ask for the key), which fills the upper floor of the store’s second building—like the first, a former barn—with piles and files of old illustrations, from midcentury advertisements to 19th-century maps to prints of someone’s prized bulls. It’s another fun place to leaf, producing political cartoons whose place and time lie far away, charming pages extracted from ancient children’s books and aerial renderings of old factories that are no longer operating.
Whitlock’s, on the other hand, continues to stand the test of time, even if, after 76 years, many of its bookshelves and floor boards now bow down to greet you.
Whitlock’s Book Barn
20 Sperry Rd, Bethany (map)
Wed-Sun 10am-5pm
(203) 393-1240 | info@whitlocksbookbarn.com
www.whitlocksbookbarn.com
Written and photographed by Dan Mims. This updated story was originally published on November 18, 2016.
