Whitlock’s Book Barn(s) of Bethany, Connecticut is closing their shop after a 78-year run. The firm recently announced its final sale. Their two barns have been gussied up as it begins to complete its 8-decade run. Its doors will close this spring.
The firm was founded by Gilbert Whitlock in 1948 at the intersection of postwar anxiety and material optimism. They began with a bookstore in New Haven and soon after opened a book barn in Bethany. Their New Haven store continued into the 1960’s, up until urban renewal displaced them. Going forward they simply became Whitfield’s Book Barn in Bethany.
Mr. Whitlock’s business became buying estates at modest prices, then offering tens of thousands of stray volumes at modest markups. He must have bought many estate close-outs because over those years it’s thought likely he sold more than 1.2 million items, many if not most sold before the Internet made the world market for printed material transparent.
It was a business, yes, but it was also a public service. And it also had a kind of magic, so many books, so many possibilities, at very low prices. It’s thought the everyday inventory was usually 50,000 items, some selling every day, others arriving by the box full.
Over the firm’s many decades, visitors would find a robust stock of books, maps and ephemera in one barn, and scholarly texts in another. Greedy vertigo might describe the intended impression. Thousands of possibilities offered for pennies on the dollar, the young and old arriving daily to pillage the stock. It wasn’t only a shop; it was an experience.
Over the years Whitlock’s enjoyed wide support. Located a few miles away from Yale University, its professors, researchers and students made Whitlock’s a favorite destination. Among them were William “Bill” Reese who, from his first Yale days, enjoyed weekends scouring local sources for sleepers – to good effect. One map he famously found at a furniture and estate auction in the New Haven/Bethany area in 1974, he traded to Yale for the balance of his tuition. His weekend trips to Whitlock’s were part of his undergraduate education. Whitlock’s was hardly more than a 15-minute drive away. Bill Reese would become one of America’s greatest book dealers.
In his published collection of essays, Collectors, Booksellers, and Libraries in 2018, Reese wrote about the “disappearance of the old-fashioned bookshop.” To Reese, “the Barn “wasn’t just a place to buy books; it was a “bibliographic laboratory” where a student could see thousands of different bindings, paper types, and signatures in a single afternoon. For Whitlock’s that was the highest praise.
Whitlock’s also drew a constellation of luminaries. In the 1950’s, Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe were known to arrive late in the afternoon, seeking the quiet of the stacks to browse in peace – their home in Roxbury sat just twenty-six miles away. Harold Bloom, the world-renowned literary critic and Yale professor, was also a frequent presence. Whether famous or forgotten, visitors were drawn to the lure of vast, uncatalogued masses of books. Whitlock’s provided that rare possibility of discovery, and its passing will be deeply mourned.
Whitfield’s
20 Sperry Road
Bethany, CT 06524
Note: Whitlock’s is tucked away on a scenic country road right on the Woodbridge border. Your mapping software on your phone will guide you.
