BookHampton Reopens With a Splash
Starting Friday, the red paper will have vanished and East Hampton Village will once again have a bookstore, as BookHampton prepares to reopen its doors. Since purchasing the shop from Charline Spektor in early March, Carolyn Brody has been hard at work, overseeing a gut renovation in short order.
“It will look familiar, but it will also look new,” Ms. Brody said, noting that the former staircase and second floor have been removed, allowing for more open space, with “bookcases that go all the way up to the ceiling.” While the cash register, now expanded, will remain in its previous location, Ms. Brody has added “two funky old white tables” at the rear of the store, with five light-filled windows along Eastman Way now visible.
Beginning Saturday, the bookstore will be open seven days a week, until Labor Day, from 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. — allowing for passers-by to peruse books well into the evening. On Saturday afternoon, from 2 to 5, the bookstore will host a reopening celebration, with everyone invited to stop in and take a look around.
“We will stay open year round,” Ms. Brody affirmed. “We’re a community bookstore, and this isn’t only for summer, it’s for everyone.”
Roxanne Coady, a longtime friend of Ms. Brody’s and current owner of R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn., is helping to guide BookHampton and get it “firing on all cylinders — and quickly,” Ms. Brody said. “We wanted to set the bar high. We wanted to launch in a very strong way.”
Of the six former full-time booksellers, Ms. Brody confirmed that only Jesse Bartel remains on the payroll. Colin Bertram will work as the manager.
Deborah Berke Partners, a Manhattan architecture and interior design firm, oversaw the store’s redesign. Ms. Berke is a longtime East Hampton resident and soon-to-be-dean of the Yale School of Architecture. Michael Bierut of Pentagram, a design firm with offices in London, San Francisco, and New York, retooled BookHampton’s blue-and-white logo. Going forward, the store will sell tote bags, T-shirts, and baseball caps featuring the new design.
As before, BookHampton will remain a general-interest bookstore. “There’s something for everyone,” Ms. Brody said, adding that current releases will still be present alongside the classics (a combined 20,000 titles and counting), while a larger selection of staff suggestions will also be featured, not to mention carefully curated children’s and young-adult sections. “As time goes on, we’ll get to know the community and what they like to read.”
A longtime BookHampton customer and civic leader, Ms. Brody has lived in East Hampton for 30 years as a summer and weekend resident. An advocate for the arts and the environment, Ms. Brody has served as chairwoman emerita of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and as past chairwoman of the National Building Museum. She has also worked as a real estate investment banker at First Boston Corporation and as a real estate consultant to the World Bank.
Forty-five years ago, BookHampton was first opened on Newtown Lane by George Caldwell and Jorge Castello, known locally as “the Georges.” The bookstore later moved to Main Street before landing across the street in its current location next to Starbucks. Hal Zwick, now the director of commercial real estate at Town and Country, briefly purchased it before Ms. Spektor and Jeremy Nussbaum, her late husband, bought it in 2000. In November, Ms. Spektor sold the Southampton store to Daniel Hirsch and Gregory Harris, two former employees. She subsequently spent several months looking for a buyer for the East Hampton location.
Ms. Brody promises to be very hands-on. BookHampton will host several authors over the summer, including Firooz Zahedi, Gerald Marzorati, Judith Stein, Jay McInerney, Moira Weigel, Isaac Mizrahi, and Maira Kalman. And a newly designed website, BookHampton.com, will soon be up and running, with visitors able to secure online reservations for various events.
BookHampton’s reopening is a longtime dream of Ms. Brody’s, going back to her childhood. Starting at the age of 9, she wanted to open her own bookstore. She named it Sunflower Truly, imagining it in a brick building on the main street of a small town. “I’m delighted to have finally realized my dream of owning a bookstore,” Ms. Brody said. “I couldn’t let it go.”