Greene's bookshop is closing its Clare Street store in Dublin and moving the business to Sandyford.
After 164 years in business, the iconic Greene's bookshop on Clare Street in Dublin is to close on 25 May.
Greene’s story began in 1843 when John Greene set up a lending library at 16 Clare Street. The bookshop has looked more or less the same since the canopy went up in 1927.
Dubliners visit the bookshop in the hope of picking up a bargain before the doors close for good. A woman says she will miss stumbling across unusual titles on the shelves,
You can’t find the sort of stock in regular chain book stores that you have here and the kind of treasures that you’d come across.
Actor Barry McGovern adds,
It seems to be these places are a dying breed now, they say it’s progress but I wonder if it’s regress.
Like generations of children Dublin historian Gerry O'Flaherty bought his schoolbooks at Greene’s. The shop has also been a favourite haunt for bibliophiles and authors,
Kiely, Kavanagh, Donleavy all of these people passed through here even Ó Faoláin, O’Connor, all of these where here.
For decades Greene's never needed to change its old world image. But due to a decline in over the counter sales and passing trade, the business will operate online from a headquarters in the Sandyford Industrial Estate. It will focus on supplying libraries, as well as schoolbooks and second-hand and antiquarian volumes, with an emphasis on books of Irish interest.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 24 May 2007. The reporter is Philip Bromwell.
