Strand Bookstore

Row after row of shelving inside the Strand at Broadway and 12th Street in Manhattan, photographed in 2024. Benjamin Bass opened the store on Fourth Avenue's Book Row in 1927, it moved to this corner in 1957, and the Bass family still runs it. The motto promises 18 miles of books, which makes it the place in New York to lose an afternoon hunting for a cheap copy of something you didn't know you wanted.