posted by maggie on Jan 13
On my own first trip to the District of Columbia, in the early 90s, I stayed on Connecticut Avenue near an incredibly inviting independent bookstore known as Politics & Prose, near the intersection of Nebraska Avenue NW and Connecticut Ave NW. You can buy your books upfront, then proceed down a few steps to the coffee house in back and peruse your purchase. They’re just now celebrating twenty-five years of business and, to me, it’s a Washington icon, just as much as any other monument. The business was begun by Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade in 1984, and the name of the store was troublesome at the start, because people thought this was a specialty store, but it’s just the name of a very fine independent, which sells books in all categories. The idea of the store was to sell books that were unusual and to offer great service, and to allow the store to operate as a place for people interested in talking about books to meet. Ten years ago, the store merged with Cheshire Cat, one of the best children’s bookstores in the United States, and now the pair have close to 10,000 square feet of sales space, with an extra three thousand square feet when you add in the offices and cafe.