Thursday, January 15, 2009 7:46 PM
David Mirvish Books to close
jadams
One of Canada's oldest and most popular independent bookstores, Toronto's David Mirvish Books, is closing its doors at the end of February.
The store, specializing in books on visual arts, architecture, photography, design and film, was opened in 1974 on Markham St., near the famous Honest Ed's department store. The store, the brainchild of theatre impresario David Mirvish, son of Toronto businessman and philanthropist Honest Ed Mirvish, was first located in a building across the street from its current site. Its present home had been a gallery for contemporary art owned by David Mirvish and a few years after the gallery's closure, in 1975, he moved the store into its premises.
Eleanor Johnston, manager of the store for more than 25 years, said yesterday there was no one reason for the store's Feb. 28 closing. "David [Mirvish] just thought it was time, that the retail world has indeed changed a lot. Of course, it's always changing... There's always been something with the economy, the currency, the chains duking it out. It's not really a question of us not really being able to keep weathering those shifting sands, to mix metaphors. I think we just decided, 'It's just enough, it's time.'"
Johnston, who started as a clerk at the store 31 years ago, said Mirvish will move its out-of-print and rare books on-line and "make them available to the world." But the bricks-and-mortar operation is kaput. She said Mirvish has not yet decided what do with the high-ceilinged room, although the famous 50-foot-long Frank Stella abstraction, "Damascus Gate," will occupy its west wall for the time being.
"It's a problematic space in some respects," she laughed. "It's an event to change a light bulb."
The closing of Mirvish Books will be the second shuttering of a specialty book outlet in Mirvish Village in less than a year. Last fall Ballenford Books, specializing in architecture titles, closed for the final time. It started in 1979.
