Fred Bass, Brooklyn College grad and co-owner of beloved Manhattan Strand Bookstore, dead at 89
Fred Bass, who for decades ran the sprawling and beloved Strand bookstore that had the tag line “18 Miles of Books,” died yesterday at age 89.
Bass died at his home in Manhattan. Leigh Altshuler, the Strand’s director of communications, said the cause of death was heart failure.
Thousands of independent bookstores perished over the past 30 years in the face of competition from chains and online commerce, but the Strand remains a meeting ground for literary obsessives seeking old-fashioned sensory overload, poring through its eclectic and unpredictable stacks of used and new books inside the store and on tables outside in Manhattan’s Union Square neighborhood.
Brooklyn Boro
View MoreNew York City’s most populous borough, Brooklyn, is home to nearly 2.6 million residents. If Brooklyn were an independent city it would be the fourth largest city in the United States. While Brooklyn has become the epitome of ‘cool and hip’ in recent years, for those that were born here, raised families here and improved communities over the years, Brooklyn has never been ‘uncool’.