Hammond’s Antiques & Books

Nearly forty years of books at 1939 Cherokee — around 60,000 of them, some rare, most long out of print — shelved among posters and prints, vintage costume jewelry, paper dolls, and a collection of more than 200,000 pieces of vintage paper dating from the 1850s to the 1960s.

The shop began with Art Deco. Jovanka Hammond had been collecting it since the fifties, recognizing pieces wherever she went until the collection was large enough to serve as a store’s inventory, and importing from France for as long as that was possible. Her brother and partner Kenz, already working in the book business, made the case that two readers and book lovers ought to be running a bookstore. Over the years much of the family worked here.

The jewelry has a history of its own: it comes from Gypsy Limited, her mother’s vintage costume jewelry store, for many years just along the street at 2217 Cherokee.

So does the building. Put up in 1896, it hid a room dug out under the back yard during Prohibition, reached by a tunnel from the basement, where the owners brewed beer and distilled whiskey. The basement stairs are still worn from the hundreds who went down there for a drink.

And now we are elevated — some would not agree — to a bookstore. All books and no booze.

It is a store for collectors and for readers both, and the owner is candid about which she enjoys more:

It is fun to sell the $800 book to a collector who has searched for it for many years, but selling a $10 book to a customer who comes back to tell you how much they enjoyed it is a satisfying experience — especially if I recommended it.

Customers call from all over the country, some of them going back twenty years, to track down a book or to ask what is worth reading. Expect art and architecture, rare books on decorated bindings, paper dolls, nice editions of the books you have always meant to get to, and music playing that you will like even if you have never heard it. The staff have miles behind them and stories to go with them, though they will not start on those unless you ask.