Store Front

by James T. Murray and Karla L. Murray (Gingko; $65)

April 6, 2009

New York’s storefronts constitute the city’s vernacular architecture, shaping the look and feel of the five boroughs no less than more celebrated elements of the skyline. These unfussy, elegant, and richly colored photographs of butcher shops, bakeries, fabric wholesalers, cuchifritos stands, stationery and sporting-goods stores, laundromats, groceries, and dive bars give connoisseurs of signage, folk typography, and ambient erosion much to pore over. Shops that opened in the nineteen-seventies now look as ancient as those dating back to the twenties. The tone is elegiac as much as it is celebratory; interviews with shop owners make it clear how close to extinction many of them stand, and the photographers report that nearly a third of these businesses have gone under in the time that it took to make the book. 

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