SARATOGA SPRINGS — According to the Northshire Books website, the Morrow family originally founded the store in 1976 in Vermont as a 1,000 square foot bookstore for all ages, with a second level for children opening up two years later.
Around 1985, the owner’s sons came back “after years of school, work and travel elsewhere, and became involved in the store, Andy with used books, and Chris learning the whole operation from top to bottom. After a few years of planning and fund raising, the newly expanded, 10,000 square foot Northshire opened in 2003, a week before Christmas.”
As the original owners were moving into retirement and Chris Morrow became the General Manager, people from Saratoga Springs began asking them to consider opening a bookstore there, leading to the Northshire location on Broadway.
Morrow mentioned that the Saratoga location opened on Aug. 6, 2013 and is currently about 8,000 square feet. “Right now, we have 16 people on staff, including part-time folks,” he said.
Additionally, “as of December 2014, we have 12 people who have been with us for over 15 years, some of whom have been with us longer than 25 years.” Morrow said that “the store has a wonderful staff who are day- to-day curating and caretaking the bookstore, changing the displays and generally managing the flow of new books and gifts that come in each week.”
He continued “we have tens of thousands of books ranging from titles for newborns to those for the elderly. We also carry many gifts, puzzles, toys and other fun stuff.”
Currently, Northshire Bookstore “is a family-owned, independent bookstore with two locations – one in Manchester Center, Vermont, and the other in Saratoga Springs, New York.”
Morrow said that “for the rest of this year, we are focused on some big events and getting ready for the holiday season.”
Some of the events at Northshire Bookstore for the remainder of 2019 are a meet and greet with Rachael Ray on Oct. 17 at Northshire, Off the Shelf with Alice Hoffman on Oct. 19 at the Saratoga Hilton and an evening with Kate DiCamillo on Nov. 1 at the Saratoga City Center.
“We have a very robust author event schedule and we are also very committed to offering an array of titles and authors, regardless of politics,” Morrow said. “People need access to all sorts of books so ideas can be explored and debated freely. This is challenging for some people. When we had Hillary Clinton, we had some protesters and disgruntled customers. Similarly, when we hosted Sean Spicer there was outrage and upset people.”
He added that “Contrary to what many people think, we are not ideological in how we choose titles to carry – we reflect what is being published and what customers are interested in.”
To that end, he said that “there are many new and interesting books coming in every week! This week Margaret Artwood’s sequel to Handmaid’s Tale is coming out. It is called The Testaments, and is the big book of the fall.”
Looking to the future, Morrow said that for “2020 and beyond, we will be looking at how to grow the business and offer more to the community.”
For more information, visit Northshire Bookstore’s website at www.northshire.com.
