The Drama Book Shop has a new home at 266 West 39th Street, in a garment district storefront a block south from its previous location on West 40th Street. When the previous owners announced the shop’s closing, saying they were being forced out of the premises, new owners Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Kail, and Jeffrey Seller, all of Hamilton fame, stepped in to save it. The expected opening is March 2020.
The store closed in January, its contents moved into storage. (Saved too was the old-fashioned sign and an upright piano from the previous location.) The book shop is a century-old resource for the theater community, selling scripts, magazines and books about the stage. It was also a meeting place; Miranda and Kail worked on In the Heights there in its basement.
The new store’s designer is David Korins, who created the set of Hamilton. The new look of the space will be inspired by European cafes, with a reading room atmosphere; it will sell coffee, merchandise and writing materials, along with play scripts, librettos and books about the arts. A basement level could be used for classes, readings or other gatherings.
The manager of the 40th Street location will manage the new store, with operations overseen by the company that oversees Hamilton‘s musical’s merchandise shop.
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