Centrally located in the DeWitt Mall in the heart of Ithaca’s downtown, Buffalo Street Books is Ithaca’s community-owned cooperative bookstore. Originally opened by Jack Goldman as Bookery II in 1981, the store was reopened by former employee Gary Weissbrot in 2006 and renamed Buffalo Street Books in 2009. In February of 2011, when Weissbrot decided to close the store, the community put together a massive buy-out effort, raising over a quarter of a million dollars and re-opening the store as a consumer coop in April.Buffalo Street Books is still in the ongoing process of re-imagining the ways an independent bookstore can serve its community, especially now that the community owns the store itself.
With regular events featuring local and national authors and artists, Buffalo Street Books is one of the premier venues for literary events in a city with a vital literary arts scene and a rich literary history.
Buffalo Street Books stocks a wide assortment of fiction, poetry, children’s books, cookbooks, academic and popular non-fiction, art books and travel books, as well as an extensive selection of classical, jazz and local CDs, classic cinema DVDs, and an array of maps, literary journals and periodicals. In addition to our comprehensive and eclectic inventory, we can special order nearly any book in print and our First Class Program offers college instructors and students a way to get course books quickly, conveniently and affordably.
Numerous studies have shown that shopping at locally owned business has striking positive effects on the local economy, and shopping at local bookstores has been shown to have an even more pronounced positive economic impact. A recent study by Civic Economics showed that for every $100 spent at local bookstores, $45 remains in the local economy, compared to only $13 out of every $100 spent in chain bookstores. Money spent at local businesses simultaneously creates jobs, funds more city services through sales tax and strengthens an environmentally and economically sustainable centralized downtown.
In an era of big box stores and online outlets, independent bookstores are critically important sites for maintaining literary communities, preserving local flavor by combating the homogenizing effect of corporate stores and promoting a lively and diverse intellectual discourse. Buffalo Street Books works with many of Ithaca’s community and campus organizations, including the Tompkins County Public Library, Cornell’s Africana Studies and Research Center, the Ithaca City School District, and Ithaca’s Big Brothers, Big Sisters Program to create and strengthen an environment of lifelong literacy.
In a city with an exceptionally literate and literary population, Buffalo Street Books is A Place for Readers.