San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Departed bookstores S.A. readers miss most
As The Twig Book Shop celebrates its 50th anniversary, here are some bygone bookstores in San Antonio that still have a place in readers’ hearts and shelves.
B. Dalton
Founded by Bruce Dayton in Minnesota in 1966, B. Dalton was a shopping mall staple that grew to nearly 800 locations in 1986. By 1997, a third of those stores were gone. Most of the last 50 locations closed in 2010.
Bookstop
This Texas-based bookstore chain launched in 1982 and had several locations in San Antonio. Barnes & Noble acquired the company in 1989.
Booksmith’s
Original Twig owner Harris Smithson opened Booksmith’s on Alamo Plaza in the early 1990s. It closed in 2001.
Borders
This superstore bookseller started in Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1971. By the late 1990s, the big-box retailer expanded beyond the U.S. to Australia, Singapore and the United Kingdom, but it never made a profit after 2006. Borders ceased operations in 2011.
Brentano’s
This national chain started as an independent bookstore in New York in 1853, though in San Antonio
it’s probably best known for its downtown location at Rivercenter mall, now the Shops at Rivercenter. That Brentano’s opened in 1988 and closed 20 years later.
Brock’s
The San Antonio antiquarian bookstore opened downtown in 1967. It was “so crammed full that there were actually areas roped off from the public because they were unsafe,” Beth Graham posted on Facebook. Brock’s closed in 1987.
Rosengren’s Books
Rosengren’s first graced downtown San Antonio in the 1930s, starting with Frank and Florence Rosengren through the 1970s and continuing with daughter-in-law Camille into the late 1980s. Like Brock’s, Rosengren’s closed in 1987.
Viva Bookstore
This San Antonio bookstore, which specialized in theology and spirituality, was at the heart of the Mini Mansions mini mall on Broadway just south of Loop 410, which John and Frannie Douglas opened in the early 1980s. Viva closed in 2016.
Waldenbooks
Like B. Dalton, Waldenbooks was a national bookstore chain with an ’80s heyday in shopping malls. And like B. Dalton, Waldenbooks also had faded from the bricks-and-mortar landscape by the 2010s. The chain was liquidated in bankruptcy in 2011.