LGBT Book, Film & Video Blog

Months before he died in 1987, author James Baldwin showed up, unannounced, at Giovanni's Room, the gay bookstore named after his landmark homosexual love story from the mid-1950s.

"I was flabbergasted," owner Ed Hermance recalls. "He looked around, autographed some books. It was over in 10 minutes."

Ten minutes and 10 years, to be precise. That's how long Hermance and his former business partner, Arleen Olshan, had been after Baldwin to visit Giovanni's, a fixture at 12th and Pine Streets.

"We wrote, we called, we hounded him - just like we did everybody else," Olshan says.

That persistence is what has kept the lights on at Giovanni's in an era when independent bookstores everywhere are going dark. Opened in 1973, Giovanni's marked its 35th anniversary Wednesday with a nostalgic soiree.

Most Philadelphians are unaware that Giovanni's is the second-oldest gay-and-lesbian bookstore in the country, behind only New York's Oscar Wilde Bookshop, launched in 1967.

Through six owners, three locations and countless volunteers, Giovanni's has come to represent far more to the city's gay community than a bibliophilic rainbow flag.

"Growing up in the city, it was one of the first places where I found people like me and a sense of community," says Gloria Casarez, 36, the Mayor's Office liaison to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.

Giovanni's has 12,000 titles in its active inventory. It holds 50 readings a year. It serves as an information clearinghouse, a crisis center, even a research library. "We've graduated many Ph.D's," Olshan, 63, says proudly.

At its current site since 1979, the bookstore is carved out of an 1880 building designed as a mom-and-pop store with living quarters. Hermance and Olshan bought it for $50,000, borrowing the down payment from their customers.

"If ever a business was created by a community, this is it," Hermance says. "People made this place with their blood and guts. The first three years, we were 100 percent volunteers."

Ten years later, after Olshan had left the partnership, Hermance doubled Giovanni's space by buying the 1820 trinity next door for $85,000.

Phila. gay bookstore Giovanni's Room marks 35 years
Philadelphia Inquirer