Several dozen community members lined up Wednesday morning to watch the opening ceremony for a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Hyde Park, the second of four new locations planned for the Chicago area in the coming months.
5th Ward Alderman Desmon Yancy and Chicago-based author Lindsay Currie were both present for the ribbon cutting, which drew mainly older community members and parents with young children. The opening was sparsely attended by UChicago students.
The new 18,000 square-foot location at East 55th Street and South Lake Park Avenue marks a return for Barnes & Noble to Hyde Park; the chain operated UChicago’s campus bookstore until Summer 2024. While the store does have a selection of University of Chicago Press titles, it does not have a dedicated section for UChicago coursebooks, a feature of other bookstores in the area.
In addition to the new Barnes & Noble, Hyde Park is home to four other bookstores and a comic book store. Only 57th Street Books, which is run by the Seminary Co-op, sells mostly general-interest titles and children’s books.
Danielle Dean, a fourth-year in the College, arrived shortly after the store opened to the public. She expressed mixed feelings about the new bookstore—excitement at the prospect of more people engaging with books and concern that a corporate location might crowd out local booksellers. Her current shop of choice is Powell’s Books Chicago, a used bookstore about two blocks south of the new Barnes & Noble location.
“I think having more bookstores generally does encourage more people to come in and engage with more literature, but I do think that I’m sad for [local bookstores] because, from an economic standpoint, I feel like this is really not good for them, and I am a little upset that they put a bookstore this close [to other locations],” Dean said. “I’m conflicted.”
Yancy had a more optimistic outlook on Barnes & Noble’s return to Hyde Park. He described the opening as “a full circle moment” for him, as he had frequented the Hyde Park Co-op Market that occupied the space until 2008 and worked in a bookstore as one of his first jobs.
Addressing whether the new location is needed in a neighborhood already home to several bookstores, Yancy said that he thinks “it adds to the palette of choices for people who are looking for books.”
Isabelle Edmondson and Camryn Franke, both first-year Ph.D. students at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering who attended the opening, were excited at the prospect of Barnes & Noble functioning as another third-space in Hyde Park.
“You can come in… and grab a book and sit down and read without having to spend money,” Franke said. “It’s really good for the community to have this as a space, because they have reading time for the kids… it’s just really cute.”
“I feel like having bookstores is not a bad thing,” she added. “Out of all of the corporate business versus small business [debates, opening] bookstores [and] encouraging people to read is generally a good thing.”
Edmonson noted that the other bookstores in Hyde Park don’t always have a wide variety of titles in stock. “I’ve gone to some of the smaller bookstores and… I love them. They’re very cute and very nice, but they don’t always have as many books,” she said. “I know you can just order them or ask them to order it, but I like how huge this bookstore is and [that] I have a lot of options.”
Dean said that she is considering using the new store for studying during her final quarter at UChicago and hopes to rekindle her love of reading.
“Especially because I’m graduating, I really want to get back to reading physical books for fun,” she said. “I’m just really excited to relive the pre-college days because they don’t have many local bookstores back home; it really is just Barnes & Noble.”
Dariel Cruz Rodriguez contributed reporting.
