Barnes & Noble Coming Back To Upper East Side, 2 Years After Closing

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Book lovers, rejoice: Barnes & Noble will open a new bookstore on the Upper East Side, more than two years after closing its longtime location on East 86th Street, the company announced Tuesday.

The new Barnes & Noble will be at 1556 Third Ave., on the corner of East 87th Street, occupying a storefront previously home to Duane Reade.

It will open in the spring of 2023, the company said. At roughly 8,000 square feet, it will be a fraction of the size of Barnes & Noble's previous 55,000-square-foot, two-level store.

"It is very good news to bring our bookstore back to the Upper East Side," Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt said in a statement. "It was very sad to close in the depths of the pandemic and especially pleasing now to reopen with one that is so dramatically more attractive."

Patch broke the news in June 2020 about the demise of the old Barnes & Noble, which had opened in 2009 between Third and Lexington avenues. The company said that location was "too large, and too expensive" — but vowed that it would return to the neighborhood in a new spot.

Tuesday's announcement makes good on that promise. Barnes & Noble's new home is known as the Agora Building, a century-old structure praised by Daunt as "a beautiful building with an old-style character with which it is a pleasure to work in creating the new bookstore."

"Bookselling is enjoying a wonderful renaissance, nowhere more so than in NYC," Daunt added. "Bookstores are bursting with energy, with events back in full swing and now a wave of new bookstore openings is underway."

Indeed, after a difficult past few years, Barnes & Noble says it is now opening bookstores at an "unprecedented rate," with 16 new locations opening this calendar year compared to just one or two each year during the decade after 2009.

More than 30 new Barnes & Noble bookstores will open in 2023, including one on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn set for a January opening.

Barnes & Noble will post updates about the new Upper East Side location on the social media handle @bnuesny.

"Our booksellers in NYC are to be very busy," said Amy Fitzgerald, the company's VP of stores, in a statement. "Not only do we have the excitement of reopening on the Upper East Side, we are also to open in Brooklyn and begin the refurbishment of our existing bookstores with the complete overhaul of our Upper West Side bookstore."

"The years of backpedaling are well and truly over for bookselling in NYC," she added.

Related coverage:

• Barnes & Noble To Close Upper East Side Store, Company Says
• Long-Awaited Upper East Side Target Opens For Business
• The Upper East Side Businesses We Lost To The Pandemic

Have an Upper East Side news tip? Contact reporter Nick Garber at nick.garber@patch.com.