Strand books owner dies
FRED BASS, a lover of literature who transformed the Strand Book Store into one of the world’s most famous shops, died Wednesday morning. He was 89.
Bass died at his Manhattan home surrounded by relatives. The cause was congestive heart failure, according to Leigh Altshuler, the Strand’s director of communications.
Bass spent more than 70 years at the East Village literary haunt founded by his father Benjamin Bass in 1927.
The younger Bass was just 13 when he first began working at what was then a little-known used bookstore on Fourth Ave. in the early 1940s.
He went on to attend Brooklyn College and fight in the Korean War before turning his passion for books into a full-time job. Bass moved the store to its current home at 12th St. and Broadway in 1957.
Lovers of the written word have for years congregated at his iconic shop where a sign out front boasts of its “18 miles of books.”
Even visiting dignitaries have been known to make time in their busy schedules to browse the Strand’s eclectic array of tomes.
“It’s a disease,” Bass told New York magazine in 1977. “I get an attack, something like a panic, of book-buying. I simply must keep fresh used books flowing over my shelves.”
Bass’ daughter Nancy Bass Wyden said she grew up at the store — sharpening pencils, shelving books and answering phones — before she started managing it with her dad some 30 years ago.
“He never had an office and loved when customers told him they enjoyed ‘getting lost in the stacks,’ ” Wyden said.
“He spent all of his time behind his buying desk, eager to see what treasures would come across it. He felt working with books was the best job in the world.”
In addition to his daughter, Bass is survived by his wife, Patricia Miller, whom he married in 1952.