This fall, one of Greater Boston's most beloved independent booksellers will open its doors in one of the city's oldest and most distinctive neighborhoods.
Harvard Book Store, a Harvard Square fixture since 1932, has announced plans to open a second location at 33 Union Street — right in the heart of the Blackstone Block, a designated Boston Landmark protected for its rare 17th-century street pattern.
The Boston Landmarks Commission recently approved an application for the exterior building and storefront renovations, including new signage for the new bookstore.
The Blackstone Block was designated a Boston Landmark in 1983, not for any single building within it, but for something even rarer:its street and alley network.
As the Boston Landmarks Commission's Study Report for the district notes, the Commission's design review requires a Certificate of Design Approval for any proposed exterior alteration within the Blackstone Block—including its streets, sidewalks, alleys, open spaces, buildings, and fixtures.
That protection has preserved what is widely regarded as the only part of Boston that still retains its original, unplanned colonial street layout—a tangle of narrow lanes and alleys that offers a genuine glimpse of the scale of 17th- and 18th-century Boston.
Unlike many Landmark properties where the designation is “all about the buildings,” the Blackstone Block is all aboutthe streetscape materials and the interstitial voids and spaces that the buildings create.
Union Street itself, which forms the western edge of the block, was laid out in 1636 and originally known as Green Dragon Lane before being renamed in 1708 in honor of the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Today, it sits along the Freedom Trail, wedged between Government Center, Faneuil Hall, and Quincy Market — a living link between colonial Boston and the bustling downtown of today. 33 Union Street is flanked by three other important 17th-century lanes, Scott Alley, Salt Lane and Marsh Lane.
Harvard Book Store's new home is not a colonial-era structure but a later addition to the block's fabric: an 1874 commercial building that most recently housed the offices of Yankee Magazine, whose “Yankee Publishing Building” signage remains on the facade.
The building has also been home to other commercial tenants over the years, including the restaurant Saus.
Its presence reflects the layered history of the Blackstone Block, where 17th-century street patterns have long coexisted with 18th, 19th, and 20th-century buildings—precisely the kind of continuity the Landmark designation was created to protect.
Harvard Book Store co-owners Jeff Mayersohn and Linda Seamonson describe the Boston expansion as a long-held ambition, following an earlier, ultimately abandoned attempt to open a location at the Prudential Center.
The new 3,500-square-foot store, designed by RODE Architects with construction by Trinity Building and Construction Management Corp., will include a dedicated children's area inspired by Old Boston and the Freedom Trail just outside its door, along with a 1,500-square-foot café operated by Lakon Paris Patisserie.
The store will also host author talks and community events, and—a first for Harvard Book Store—will offer wine at some of those gatherings.
Store leadership has expressed their desire to connect the new location to the literary heritage of its surroundings.
In a letter to customers, the bookstore noted that the Blackstone Block takes its name from William Blackstone, an early colonial settler said to have owned the largest personal library in New England, and that the radical colonial-era newspaper The Massachusetts Spywas once published just a few doors away.
The store has also pointed to its proximity to the site of Elizabeth Peabody's 19th-century bookshop, where Margaret Fuller held her famous “Conversations” — a lineage of bookselling and public discourse that the new location hopes to carry forward.
The arrival of a destination bookstore in the Blackstone Block is a reminder of how historic preservation and vibrant contemporary uses can reinforce one another.
The Landmark protections on the block's streets and alleys ensure that new commercial tenants like Harvard Book Store operate within — and help sustain — a genuinely historic public realm, rather than a recreated or stylized version of one.
As the Landmarks Commission's Study Report makes clear, the goal of designation was never to freeze the Blackstone Block in time, but to safeguard the irreplaceable street pattern while allowing the buildings and businesses within it to continue evolving.
Harvard Book Store expects to open its doors at 33 Union Street this fall. Staff at the Office of Historic Preservation will continue to monitor exterior work at the site as construction commences.
This article was prepared by Chelsea Blanchard, Staff Architect.