Bookseller McNally Jackson will leave its 52 Prince Street location, in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood, at the end of June 2019. The store has been in business since 2004, when it was initially opened as part of founder Sarah McNally's family bookstore operation, McNally Robinson.
The news, originally reported by Bowery Boogie following the appearance of leasing banners on the storefront on Monday, was confirmed by its owner, McNally, via email on Tuesday
"McNally Jackson is moving at the end of June. I will be able to make a formal announcement on our new location soon, but I can promise that it will be nearby," McNally said, adding: "We have put aside a nest egg for this day. We have known it was coming."
The news comes roughly a year after McNally Jackson announced plans for a store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which opened earlier this year. McNally Jackson is also slated to open a South Street Seaport location by the end of 2018, after a delay from its original 2017 opening plans.
"This whole process has made me think about the soul of McNally Jackson," McNally said about the new plans to move.. "What about McNally Jackson is irreducible? It’s certainly not the current space, which is in a shoddy building that was thrown up over a former chicken abattoir. The soul of McNally Jackson is the books and the booksellers. We have remained devoted to an old-fashioned idea of bookselling, in which bookstores are edifying spaces. While so many bookstores have cut back on inventory, we’ve gone deeper."
She added: "We have always prioritized our mission to be a hub of global literary culture, with 14,000 books in our literature section alone, divided by geography. I don’t know a better retail resource for international literature, anywhere in the world. This we will keep, and translate into a new space."
