Book Selling Is Essential Service, Strand Bookstore Tells Cuomo

EAST VILLAGE, MANHATTAN — Iconic bookstore The Strand will try to convince Gov. Andrew Cuomo that its books are an essential service for New Yorkers so that it can stay open for online orders during his stay-at-home mandate.

The 93-year-old bookstore has filed a request with the governor's office to add book-selling to the state's list of "essential businesses" that are allowed to keep running while the rest of New York's workforce is ordered to stay home to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

"We strongly believe that our 18 miles of books are a vital resource the world could really use right now," owner Nancy Bass Wyden said in a statement online.

The request comes after The Strand had to temporarily lay off the majority of its staff to stay afloat during the COVID-19 closure — the first mass layoff in its nearly century-long history, Bass Wyden said.

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Should it be granted, 10 staff would return to the store to fill online orders, Communications Director James Case Odum told Patch. The store had not heard back from Cuomo's office as of Monday morning.

The Strand closed its Broadway and East 12th Street store a week before the government mandate to shut down. The store has continued to pay staff for the week and are working with providers to extend health insurance as long as possible, Bass Wyden said.

"We know that it is is our booksellers that make The Strand so beloved, so our goal is to get through this so we can rehire every employee as soon as possible," she wrote. "...After a century of beating the odds, we won't give up now."

The coronavirus-led closures has also put the opening date for The Strand's new Upper West Side location in limbo, Odum said.

The store, which is taking over Book Culture's space on Columbus Avenue, was scheduled to open in the beginning of April. Odum said he did not have details about the opening.

"As you can imagine everything is up in the air right now," Odum said. "Taking everything hour by hour."