Bookstore’s next chapter

Latino culture shop La Casa Azul — 6 years in the making — to open in spring

AURORA ANAYA-CERDA is the driving force behind a new, Latino culture-focused bookstore, La Casa Azul, to open this spring at 143 E.103rd St. in East Harlem.

The brick-and-mortar incarnation represents the culmination of an indefatigable effort, one that’s taken years to see through. AnayaCerda, 34, started out six years ago by opening a traveling bookstore, and she launched a website in 2008.

She clung to her dream all the while, sustaining a campaign to line up the financing for a physical store.

“I feel like this bookstore is a perfect fit for this neighborhood, because it will have those traditional (Latino) components and those elements in terms of design,” says Anaya-cerda, who also works at the cultural center El Museo del Barrio.

“El Barrio is rich in culture already,” she adds. “. . . It just makes sense that this store is here at this moment, and it just fits right into the arts that are thriving in this neighborhood.”

The Daily News has been chronicling Anaya-cerda’s efforts for several years, most recently detailing her push to raise “40k in 40 days” through the website IndieGogo last October.

With that funding and the help of an anonymous “angel investor” — a person, she says, who “has seen the entire journey from beginning to end” and contributed $40,000 to the cause — Anaya-cerda has brought the store’s opening to within weeks of fruition.

The building’s ongoing renovation has produced aquamarine walls and a mural on the steps outside, courtesy of local artist Manny Vega.

The store’s name and design — inspired by painter Frida Kahlo’s home — reflect Anaya-cerda’s dream of creating a space that does more than just sell books, though that would be a bold- enough goal, considering that there are currently no bookstores in El Barrio.

Indeed, to buy books, one has to venture down to the upper East Side, or across Central Park to Morningside Heights.

Anaya-cerda envisions the space as “a community place” that will combine her passion for literary and visual arts in a way that suits the multicultural nature of the neighborhood.

The store will also sell coffee, offer writers’ programs and include an art gallery. Anaya-cerda describes this approach in terms of her desire to build La Casa Azul into what she calls “the literary haven of East Harlem — where you come whether you’re a reader, you’re a writer or you’re interested in learning about culture and literary arts.”

La Casa Azul represents the next chapter for Anaya-cerda, who first built a successful online venture of the same name. Although launching a website first and a brick-and-mortar second was the reverse of Anaya-cerda’s original plan, she says it has actually served her well.

“What I realized later was that it created a platform for me and began to draw an audience,” she says. El Barrio residents came to recognize Anaya-cerda through the cultural and literary programs she organized on the website and, as a result, began asking where her store was and what its hours were.

Anaya-cerda interpreted that interest “as a really great sign that this was something that people would come to, and that would be successful.”