Industry Specialty retail Founder Angelo Rizzoli | Founded 1964 (1964) Owner RCS MediaGroup | |
Headquarters New York, New York, United States Products new and rare books, magazines, stationary, DVDs, CDs | ||
Rizzoli Bookstore is a general interest bookstore, located in the St. James Building, 1133 Broadway in New York City, that primarily specializes in illustrated books and foreign language titles. Its previous location at 31 W. 57th Street was noted for its beautiful interior. After Rizzoli's lease expired in April 2014, the 57th St. building was demolished. Rizzoli moved to its current NoMad location on July 27, 2015. The Rizzoli Bookstore is owned by RCS MediaGroup, an Italian multimedia company, and is maintained by Rizzoli New York.
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History
In 1964, Angelo Rizzoli opened Rizzoli Bookstore at 712 Fifth Avenue in New York City. Located in a landmarked building designed by Albert S. Gottlieb in 1907 and inspired by the classical style of 19th century Parisian town houses, the Rizzoli store attracted legions of customers with its "marble floors, oak paneling, sparkling chandeliers." Gianfranco Monacelli, who went on to become the president and chief executive of Rizzoli Publications before creating Monacelli Press in 1994, started as a night clerk in the Fifth Avenue store in 1965.
In the seventies, Roberto Polo, investment manager, art collector, and would-be design mogul worked part-time at Rizzoli while a graduate student at Columbia. As the director of the Rizzoli Gallery, he organized an exhibition entitled “Fashion as Fantasy.”
In 1976, Rizzoli opened a store in Chicago's Water Tower Place. Additional stores later opened in Boston, Costa Mesa, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Pasadena, San Francisco, Dallas, Oak Brook, Atlanta, Washington DC, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Williamsburg. In 1984, Rizzoli acquired Scribner's Bookstore on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and opened an additional store in Soho.
The Scribner’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue continued to operate under Rizzoli ownership until 1989, when it closed; the building, designed by Ernest Flagg in 1913, is now a Sephora.
In 1985, Rizzoli Bookstore relocated to West 57th Street. The old Rizzoli building, 712 Fifth Avenue, and the Coty Building next door were saved at the last minute when they were designated landmarks. The new store occupied three floors of the former Sohmer Piano Company showroom and was renovated by H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture.
Rizzoli closed most of its national locations except for its flagship store in 2001.
In 2010, Rizzoli Bookstore opened a boutique store in the Italian food megastore Eataly, featuring nearly 400 titles related to food and drink. In 2012, a similar store opened in Saks Fifth Avenue, featuring a curated selection of books on fashion, design, entertaining, interiors, special travel destinations and New York.
On April 11, 2014, Rizzoli closed its flagship store on West 57th Street in New York, under the protest of customers and preservationists, when its lease expired. The LeFrak Organization and Vornado Realty Trust, which had owned the building since 2006, planned to raze it and two adjoining buildings. Demolition started shortly after the bookstore closed. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission had refused to warrant landmark status for the building, noting that the interior design dated only to 1985 and that there was not enough original substance from the 1919 building left. The decision and the way the decision was made by the Landmarks Preservation Commission was criticized by the editorial board of the New York Times.
Rizzoli reopened at its current Broadway location in July 2015.
In popular culture
Rizzoli Bookstore has been used as a prominent location in the films Falling in Love (1984), Manhattan (1979), and True Story (2015), in addition to television series such as Seinfeld.