The Last Bookstore

How to Get There

Drive east on E 1st Street, turn right onto S Spring Street; bookstore is on the left just past 5th Street.

Overview

The Last Bookstore is an independent bookstore located at 453 S Spring Street, Downtown Los Angeles. Conde Nast Traveler called it California's largest new and used bookstore.

History

The store was founded in 2005 by Josh Spencer. The first incarnation was a downtown Los Angeles loft. They sold books and other things online only, then focused on books, opened a small bookstore in December 2009 on 4th and Main streets. They moved to the current incarnation in the Spring Arts Tower at 5th and Spring streets on June 3, 2011. The store is 22,000 square feet. The current store is in a former bank with books on two levels, including the former vault.

Vox reported that the store creates visual merchandising through creative displays, which attracts Instagram users, "in the hope of trying to convert Instagram visitors into book purchasers."

Media

Filmmaker Chad Howitt chronicled The Last Bookstore and its owner, Spencer, in a short documentary titled Welcome to the Last Bookstore, released in 2016. It tells the story of how Spencer was injured as a young man and lost the use of his legs, forcing him to re-examine his life. Los Angeles Film Review called the effort an "ode to resilience."

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "The Last Bookstore", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0