'The bookshop is one of the great treasures of our city,'said the executive director of the Poetry Society of America and poetry editor at the New Yorker, Alice Quinn. Her book of new uncollected poems of Elizabeth Bishop was feted there this year, and the Knopf Poetry Series was launched there in 1980. "It's just a magical place, one that feels personally important to so many of us.'"

"Founded in 1920 by Frances Steloff, Gotham became a literary oasis for authors and publishing figures, some of whom got their start working there. According to a story in the New York Times by Herbert Mitgang, Allen Ginsberg and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) worked there as clerks, but Tennessee Williams did not last a day. For one thing, 'He didn't know how to wrap packages.'"

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