About Pageant

Pageant Book Shop was founded in 1946 by Sidney B. Solomon and Henry "Chip" Chafetz as a used and rare book shop in New York City. Pageant had its home in several locations along Fourth Avenue, known as “Book Row of America”, for 35 years before moving around the corner to East 9th Street. During that time, Mr. Solomon and Mr. Chafetz branched out into several additional areas which included selling prints and maps, reprinting scholarly and important works such as Henry Roth’s “Call It Sleep” and publishing the award winning Pageant Facsimile of the Gutenberg Bible.

The shop and its books have appeared in numerous movies filmed in New York City including Neil Simon’s "Chapter Two" with James Caan and Marsha Mason and Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters" where Michael Caine and Barbara Hershey went browsing for a copy of e.e. cumming's poems.

After the deaths of Mr. Chafetz and Mr. Solomon, Pageant continued under the ownership of Sid’s daughter Shirley Solomon. The gentrification of Fourth Avenue in the 1990’s forced nearly all of the remaining bookshops to re-locate or close. At that time, the shop moved to West Houston Street and in the summer of 1999, Pageant Books and Prints Shop closed its physical shop and went virtual. Shirley has now been joined by her sister, Rebecca Solomon who was also raised “in the business”.

We are very enthusiastic that our website will create an opportunity for world-wide access to items that were once only found by patient book lookers and savvy print seekers crawling up ten-foot ladders or lounging on dusty floors flipping through drawers and boxes. We welcome new customers as well as old to our new home. Browse through our e-Shop which houses our best collections and find out more about our stock. We look forward to helping you find that perfect print to decorate your home, that perfect map to decorate your office, or that perfect book to complete your research. Please let us know if you're looking for anything in specific and we'll do our best to help you find what you're looking for. We’ll be listing new items daily so bookmark our site and come back often.

Have fun in our e-Shop!

Shirley Solomon and Rebecca Solomon

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