Book and art lovers find new spaces in southern Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
It was a banner night for arts and letters in the city south of the Monongahela on Thursday with the opening of a bookstore on the South Side and a gallery in Allentown.
In an age of online shopping, ebooks and iTunes, if one were picking growth industries on which to build a future, bank a career and support a family, one could hardly select a riskier gambit that used books and vinyl records.
And yet, Eric Ackland has managed to successfully capitalize on a niche analog market in a digital age. The Philadelphia native has opened the third — and largest — location of his Amazing Books & Records on the South Side, in the longtime former home of Schwarz Market on East Carson Street.
Several hundred people passed through the doors Thursday evening, browsing paperbacks and flipping through stacks of vintage LPs, from The Beatles to Leonard Cohen and Nirvana, while local band Chillent grooved in the store’s rear.
“Over the past five or 10 years every time a bookstore opens or closes, it makes news in the way other retail stores don’t,” he said.
“People are excited about it for so many reasons. Every week we have people discover us and tell us, ‘We’re grateful that you’re here.’ There’s a certain cache to it that doesn’t exist with other businesses.”
The business has grown steadily, and the new South Side location will easily be the largest. The 4,600-squarefoot space was a grocery store from 1938 until it closed in 2011. Since then building owner Elisa Beck had used the space to champion environmental and nutrition causes as the Schwarz Living Market. Amazing Books & Records will continue that mission in part. It will house a vegan cafe, Serendipity, which Mr. Ackland hopes to open in a month. It will also be a home for the Steel Quill Writers Workshop.
Mr. Ackland quite literally followed his heart to Pittsburgh five years ago from New York City after meeting onlinethe woman who would become his wife. He bought Awesome Books on Liberty Avenue, Downtown, changed the name and added records, and opened a second location on Murray Avenue in Squirrel Hill three years ago.
“It’s love and faith on the homefront and love and faith in the business,” he said.
Jamin Bogi of the South Side Slopes shopped with his wife, Ivy Steinberg, and walked out with a few books in tow.
“When we moved here, there were three bookstores on Carson Street,” Mr. Bogi said. “That was a big draw, to get a coffee and hang out in a bookstore. So it’s great to have this building reused as this beautiful space.”
Just a mile up the hill in Allentown, another endeavor that would have seemed far-fetched a few years ago — a gallery space on East Warrington Avenue — had its opening show.
Studio Eight27 is a project of Fame 15 Creative, and it is on the top floor of its building. The opening show, “FOCUSED,” features the photography of the Steel City Grammers, a collective of local photographers who feature their work on Instagram.
“The neighborhood is starting to experience a little avant-garde activity at Black Forge Coffee House and Drip Lounge,” Fame 15 founder Laura Early said. “This is fun for us and a way to meet and collaborate with other creatives in a space that’s maybe a little unexpected.”
“It’s been exciting to see what’s happened here over the last five years — There is still room for growth, but it’s good to get people to come to this neighborhood and experience it,” she said, noting that even among local residents, people often think she is referring to the Pennsylvania city 282 miles to the east when she says she works in Allentown. “It’s a good neighborhood.”
The Steel City Grammers’ exhibit will run through the end of July, Ms. Early said, and a macabre-themed exhibition is in the works for the fall.
“We are happy to have more businesses up here that are engaging with other independent entrepreneurs to be an outlet and physical space fortheir work, which is cool.” Aaron Sukenik, executive director of the Hilltop Alliance, said. “It’s very organic. We appreciate that.”