Doylestown Bookshop To Celebrate 25th Anniversary Milestone

DOYLESTOWN BOROUGH, PA — The Doylestown Bookshop will celebrate its 25th anniversary on Saturday, May 13 with a toast to the store's continued success.

Owner Glenda Childs is inviting the community to come out to share stories and mingle with booksellers, past and present, between 1 and 3 p.m. Local musician Bruce Malcolm also will be on hand to provide music as the shop celebrates and reminisces about the past 25 years and looks to the future.

"Both Pat and I are so grateful for the outpouring of community support over all these years," said Childs. "Please know how important you are to the success of the Doylestown Bookshop. You, our customers, and the community have given us your continuing, unwavering support. It continues to be our pleasure, 25 years later, to serve you and all your literary needs."

A quarter of a century ago, in May 1998, Pat Gerney bought the bookshop from the Village Green Bookstore, a chain based in Rochester, N.Y. Pat renamed it The Doylestown Bookshop with the hope it would become a “hometown bookstore.”

Bestselling "Glass Castle" author Jeannette Walls during a March visit to the Doylestown Bookshop. (Contributed)

Throughout the ebook explosion, the big box store expansions, and the beginning of online shopping, the Doylestown Bookshop remained steady.

Hosting Harry Potter midnight release parties, creating a space where families could bring their children to grow to love books, and supporting local authors when their first books were published.

That legacy continued when Glenda Childs purchased the Doylestown Bookshop from Pat in May 2012, a time when many thought that brick-and-mortar bookstores were a thing of the past.

Glenda said she was charmed by the bookshop and the town and felt that the community would respond if she brought in more author events, added book-related gift products, and continued supporting "our local authors and the wonderful families that choose to raise their kids with visits to our children’s department."

The community response was overwhelmingly. So much so that in 2017, Glenda opened The Lahaska Bookshop, a sister store to the Doylestown location in Peddler’s Village. Since then, she has continued to grow and nurture both bookstores and is thrilled to celebrate The Doylestown Bookshop’s 25th Anniversary this month.