Labyrinth opens its doors after two-year wait

Labyrinth Books opens today on Nassau Street, replacing the U-Store as the primary on-campus source of books for students.

The opening of the 6,500-sq.-ft store at 122 Nassau Street marks the completion of more than two years of planning by the University and six months of renovations that have transformed Princeton's retail landscape.

Besides becoming the primary campus bookstore, Labyrinth also replaces Micawber Books, an independent bookstore which for the last 25 years offered an alternative to the U-Store for textbooks and other academic books. Micawber's owners sold the store to the University last year, and it closed in March.

Several Nassau Street stores have closed, including Micawber and Foot Locker, which occupied the space that now houses Labyrinth, and the U-Store on University Place has been repurposed. A second U-Store, located in the space previously occupied by Micawber and the Children's Place, will open tomorrow.

Labyrinth co-owner Dorothea von Moltke said her goal is to cultivate a store that can cater to the University and the Princeton community as a whole. "The idea is not to separate events into [those] for one or the other constituency because we really think the kind of events we're planning to do should be interesting for both groups."

Von Moltke said she is currently in the process of planning the store's events, including "book signings and book celebrations when an author has a new book out." She explained that she likes to pair authors and speakers who complement each other and spark dialogue. "It's very intimate that way," she added.

Since Labyrinth, a small chain which is also located at Yale and used to have a store at Columbia, will be the major source for students purchasing books on campus, von Moltke said, "We're constantly thinking about what would be content that would be meaningful in particular to students."

Concerns about whether books and other materials available in the store would be relevant to students in the sciences have already led to the addition of "a couple of events for the sciences," she said.

Rather than having open, self-service textbook shelves like those the U-Store had on its third floor, Labyrinth will store textbooks in an area not open to the public. Students looking to buy course materials will fill out a form listing their classes to give to an employee, who will retrieve the requested books.

Von Moltke said that Labyrinth's method means students will "find how much quicker and easier it is when someone who knows exactly where the books are is matching up your book list with those books, and you get accurate information about anything that is not on the shelf."

She added that Labyrinth will "also be communicating via Blackboard about books that are still coming into the store so that we'll save unnecessary trips to the store."

Charles Wright '11 temporarily worked at Labyrinth this week to stock books in anticipation of today's opening. He said he will likely frequent the store after it opens. "They have a lot of different popular books and a lot of interesting academic books, and it's a nice environment. It'll be a nice hangout spot."

Other campus reactions have been more ambivalent.

Longtime University English professor James Richardson '71, who is also acting director of the creative writing program, speculated that many of his colleagues "were fans of Micawber and sad to see it go," he said in an email.

History professor Anthony Grafton, however, said that while he will "miss Micawber books," he is optimistic for the future of academic bookselling in Princeton. Labyrinth, he said, "is really, very, very good, much better than any other academic bookstore in New York City." Grafton is also a columnist for The Daily Princetonian and has written about the bookstore change in his column.

Bethany Massey '10 expressed disappointment over the closing of Micawber. "I'm just sad to see an independent bookseller go," she said.

But creative writing professor Paul Muldoon, director of the Lewis Center for the Arts, said in an email that he is "pleased to see a bookshop occupying so much real, and metaphorical, space on Nassau Street. Its positioning perfectly complements our mission to put the arts at the heart of the Princeton experience and we look forward to a long and, if I may say so, not too labyrinthine, relationship."

See related:

— Labyrinth to launch in November (Oct. 5, 2007) — Micawber leaves Labyrinth a challenging market (Jan. 22, 2007) — Column: Labyrinths? (Nov. 27, 2006) — U-Store may discontinue book sales (Oct. 23, 2006)