Crawford Doyle Booksellers engenders fierce loyalties among its customers. Its location, between 81st & 82nd Streets on Madison Avenue, makes it an ideal stopping place after visits to the Guggenheim or Jewish Museums or to the Metropolitan Museum around the corner on Fifth Avenue. The New York Social Diary puts it this way: “…amidst fashionable boutiques, art galleries and cafés, sits a veritable book lover’s paradise. Crawford Doyle at first beckons with its well-stocked windows, draws you in with its first editions and art auction catalogues judiciously located in the entrance, and then continues to entice you with its warm wood paneling and tomato bisque walls. The seduction is complete when you begin talking to its employees, several of whom have been there for many years and are truly knowledgeable about what is on offer.”
Since 1938, an independent bookstore has held its own on this block of the Upper East Side despite a barrage of superstores, websites, digital books, and other alternatives for people who like to read. Crawford Doyle, which opened its doors in 1995, offers a unique advantage over the behemoths: a friendly, knowledgeable staff eager to share its love of books on a first-hand basis with readers. The small size of the store offers another advantage: only the best books in each field are offered. Whether it is history, literary fiction, a memoir, the latest coffee-table art book, a pop-up book for your ten-year-old, or the latest mystery, Crawford Doyle will have selected the best titles to present. Here’s what one customer says about the story, writing in AM NEW YORK: “Crawford Doyle Booksellers might be my all-time favorite bookstore anywhere. It’s small, it’s well organized. It’s neither quaint nor modern. It has an incredible selection, and mostly I want to buy nearly every book they put on the table. The staff are incredibly knowledgeable and I am just envious that they get to work at this fantastic shop.” –CherryPatter
