A long line forms in front of the sole cash register. In 2012, Atlanta’s Outwrite Bookstore and Coffeehouse met the same fate.Īt Giovanni’s Room, which takes its name from James Baldwin’s classic of gay literature, laughter from the second floor punctuates customers’ goodbyes. closed, as did San Francisco’s A Different Light the following year. Due to poor sales, 2009 saw the shuttering of New York’s Oscar Wilde Bookshop. In the past five years, many gay bookstores in major cities have shut down. “Coming in the store can be like coming out to yourself.” “The store has played a critical role in so many people’s lives,” says Hermance, 73, with neatly parted gray hair. On the store’s front counter, next to a “Daddy’s Little Bull Dyke” pin, Giovanni’s Room owner Ed Hermance places a vase of purple orchids given to him by a customer who first stepped foot into the bookstore in 1980. Thanks for all the years of love and support, XOXO Giovanni’s Room.”

On its final day, just weeks before a federal court struck down Pennsylvania’s gay marriage ban, the front door was adorned with a different kind of marker, this one announcing, “50% off everything – this is our last day. Founded in 1973, the shop is known as the oldest gay bookstore in America. Holding hands, a straight couple stops near the store’s outside wall to read a Blue Historical Marker citing Giovanni’s Room as a “refuge” for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. Giovanni’s Room takes up two floors of a house built in 1820, just a few blocks down from Pennsylvania Hospital, and, as of May 17th, it closed, probably for good. A poster to re-elect Brian Sims, Pennsylvania’s first openly gay state legislator, looks out from the store window. Double-decker tour buses pass by the shop’s location on the corner of 12th and Pine Street.

Across the street from Philadelphia bookstore Giovanni’s Room two men kiss.

Giovanni's room cover