Albertine Books
I work in advertising, and so there are few things I love more than when my obsession with books and my appreciation for really smart marketing collide.
It’s why I pore over Penguin’s great print ads online (my favorite is the brand’s Your Own World work). It’s why I go gaga for Samantha Irby’s campaign in support of the re-release of her book Meaty. And it’s why I rejoiced to see Albertine Bookstore’s swaggering marketing efforts earlier this year.
If Albertine’s tote bags and Instagram posts are to be believed, the best bookstore in France is in fact in New York City. The French and English-language bookstore sassily proclaims things such as “the best bookstore in France is closer to the Hudson than the Seine,” and “the best bookstore in France is a subway ride away.” So I decided to fact-check the shop's bold assertions myself.
Albertine is located on the fanciest part of Fifth Avenue, across the street from Central Park in the Payne Whitney mansion that houses the French Embassy. The vibe is heavy on marble columns, soaring ceilings, and brass fixtures. And while getting there requires a pass through a metal detector, it also includes a pass by a sculpture attributed to Michelangelo. Suffice it to say, the place is pretty posh.
Inside, the Albertine is a beauty to behold. The first floor feels like a classic French bookshop, with wall upon wall of white-spined books and tables stacked high with philosophy texts and translations. Upstairs, the floors are dotted with couches and corners for reading, while the ceiling has a sprawling celestial scene. The whole store is majestic, the kind of thing you might imagine in a dream. And, in a way, it is – Albertine is the product of the imagination and persistence of one man in particular, Antonin Baudry.
In an interview with the New Yorker, Baudry explained why he worked for five years to transform his vision for the store into a reality:
“I really believe in places where you can have intimacy and meet people,” he said, relaxing into his chair. “That’s why I love so much the cafés in Paris or Madrid or in Europe in general. I didn’t really find such a place, to be honest, in New York. And I didn’t find a place where one could find good French books, whether in French or in English. So I had these two things in mind—and there were a lot of people who were asking for this—and then I found photos of the building, taken when it was a home for the Payne Whitney family. I noticed a room that was a library, and I thought, Where is_ _that? So I explored the building, and found that the room had become a kind of storage—there was a vacuum cleaner and so on—and it was divided into offices. And I thought, We could do something here. Pourquoi pas?”
Why not indeed. In just a few minutes, Albertine stole my heart and skidded right to the top of my New York City bookstore hit list. I eavesdropped on debates about French fiction, heard a father teaching his son that Gallic ‘oi’ vowel combination that sounds like it starts with the letter 'w,' and read undisturbed for hours as the sun arced in through floor to ceiling windows. It was wonderful.
So grab an uptown train, pick up a ‘best bookstore’ tote bag, and feel the magic for yourself.