239 Post (1921-1948)

On 22 October 1921, after twelve years on Grant St, Elder moved his bookstore to 239 Post, across the street from where the 1898 store had been. The new store offered several advantages, including a larger sales areas and a gallery & lecture hall.

Several concessions to modernity are noticeable in these pictures. Books now dominate every room, and the art objects so carefully mixed into the previous store have been relegated to a special art room on the mezzanine. And for the first time, cash registers are in plain sight: they had been carefully hidden in all of Elder’s previous stores, lest they detract from the atmosphere.

As before, many furnishings were brought to the new store to maintain a sense of continuity: chandeliers and bookcases from the 1906 Van Ness store, and the gothic window screens from Maybeck’s 1909 store.

Elder made good use of his new gallery & lecture hall; numerous artists held exhibitions at Elder’s store, and there were frequent readings by featured authors.

Presumably Elder was affected by the Great Depression as much as his customers, but he weathered it without many ill effects. Indeed, he published several books during the early 1930s.