You Had Me at Beacon Hill Books
Bookstores are special places. Yeah, I know that is a little trite and super hippie-dippie-star-child talk. I stand by it. Someone’s heart has been sealed into the brick and mortar like a time capsule. Not just someone, but a reader, maybe a writer; a passionate appreciator, an enthusiastic promoter, a fight-like-hell advocate for books and everything that a literate culture represents. All the creative possibilities. All the revolutionary offerings. All the life-changing-world-tilting-molecule-rearranging ideas folded between two covers like some kind of nuclear origami. If your town, your city, your community does not have an independent bookstore, you’re sunk, you’re hooped. I’m sorry. It’s true. You’re at the kind of dangerous disadvantage that we used to see in films where entire populations fall under the spell of some autocrat telling you how all that critical thinking and reading is such a burden (unsexy!) right before he lights the match and tosses it on the pile of Toni Morrison and Gertrude Stein. Except that every day a book ban goes into effect anywhere or an indie bookstore has to pack up its shelves, we are one step closer to living that script instead of just watching it.
Whenever I travel anywhere the first thing I do is find out where the closest bookstores are to where I’m staying. I want to be able to support that business. I want to have a few go-to safe spaces where I can spend time without worrying about being hassled. And I also love getting to experience the store’s personality. A bookstore curated with conscientiousness and authenticity is so much more than a retail space; it’s a living manifesto for creativity, community, ideas, and the transformative power of story in all its forms.
Beacon Hill Books & Café opened about two weeks ago. I had read an article in the spring about a store coming to that part of Boston and wrote “Beacon Hill new bookstore, Sept.” on a post-it note and stuck it in my planner. Because I am both a dork and at a crucial junction in my journey to cronehood where something like a new bookstore gives me happy heart palpitations in a way that concert tickets in some smoky, sticky, loud, death-trap-fire-hazard arena once did. Fade in Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game.”
Beacon Hill is one of Boston’s historic neighborhoods. Developed in the early-1700s, Beacon Hill is home to stunning eighteenth and nineteenth-century row houses and mansions. Brick sidewalks and jaunty gas lamps and hidden courtyards tucked behind brick walls laced in ivy—Beacon Hill is the one place in the city where you’d almost guarantee to find at least one bookstore. Nope. All those tech-start-up billionaire parents schlepping their precious littles with names like Nutmeg and Obsidian to story hour in Cambridge. Gasp! I can’t believe they let things slide this long. Fortunately, all that’s over. Now Nutmeg and Obsidian can sit by the fireplace in the children’s room at Beacon Hill Books listening to a story and then fight over who gets to push the big red button to make the train travel on its route around the top of each room, which includes passing over Boston’s iconic Longfellow and Harvard bridges. Seriously. File under: Can I move in, please?
Located on Charles Street, the neighborhood’s main shopping avenue, Beacon Hill Books resides in a space that used to belong to a fine dining restaurant and Beacon Hill staple called The Hungry I. In 2019, a woman named Melissa Fetter bought the property with the sole purpose of transforming it into a bookstore. Several years of massive renovations and one crappy pandemic later, Beacon Hill Books arrived in style.
Four floors of books and a bottom-level café space that includes a small courtyard, the store largely resembles the elegant, homey brownstone it was at one point in time. Fireplaces on every floor; cozy chairs and sitting nooks; built-in shelves that make you feel like you’re browsing someone’s private library; airy, light-filled windows with lofty views of Charles Street—I found myself standing rather stupidly and embarrassingly in every part of the space, mouth hanging open, also quite stupidly and embarrassingly, gawking at everything, taking photos to hide the fact that I was, stupidly and very embarrassingly, tearing up.
I think part of my astonishment was just from being inside one of these magnificent residences. Whenever I’m wandering around Beacon Hill I make a habit of slowing down in front of open doors where painting or remodeling crews are working hoping to get a glimpse inside. Here I was in the inner-sanctum and, even better, the house was full of books! The way the Universe intended! Bed? I can sleep in one of these chairs. Who actually needs an oven? But I was also flooded with gratitude and joy that this place now existed. Not just a new place for books and readers and creators and thinkers, but a home for all these things, a space made for the growing and sheltering of something sacred and vital-now more than ever.
How awesome! Could you imagine if this was an AirB&B? Sign me up for a few weeks! ❤️