Giovanni's Room Celebrates 30 Years

Over the course of his long tenure at Giovanni's Room -- "America's World-Class Lesbian & Gay, Transgender & Bisexual Bookstore with all the trimmings" -- Ed Hermance has seen the second-oldest gay and lesbian bookstore (Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York City is the oldest) through some sea changes.

Display at Giovanni's Room, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The Philadelphia store, which celebrated its 30th anniversary this October, started out with a few hundred titles and was even homeless for a short time in the late 1970s. In the City of Brotherly Love, no one would rent a space to a gay and lesbian bookstore. These days Giovanni's Room owns two buildings, has over 36,000 titles, and the Philadelphia tourism board has invited

Hermance to help in the advertising campaign designed to draw gays and lesbians to Philadelphia. "Things are very different," he said. "Now the Supreme Court has decriminalized every gay man and lesbian in the country."

Giovanni's Room isn't having an official celebratory bash, but they are hosting a reading series over the next few week that includes Edmund White (A Married Man, Knopf), Arthur Prodigy (A Place Where I Lost My Jesus, Aventine Press), and Alex Sanchez (Rainbow High, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers).

The historic bookstore got its start in 1973 when "three white gay guys" as Hermance characterized them, Tom Wilson Weinberg, Bern Boyle, and Dan Sherbo, opened the 500-square foot Giovanni's Room at its original location on South Street. They wanted to use a gay and lesbian title for the name of the bookstore -- The Well of Loneliness, A Room of One's Own, and Giovanni's Room made the shortlist. "The Well of Loneliness sounded a little depressing," Hermance joked. "Giovanni's Room was a code word, every homosexual knew the gay novel by James Baldwin. Since Baldwin was black, Giovanni's Room was a great way, in eyes of the founders, to communicate across racial divides.

"Now, not so many people have heard of Giovanni's Room. We spell it all day long. Sometimes we get calls for pizza, but it's a great way of selling books. People always ask what's Giovanni's Room?"

The founding triumvirate sold the bookstore to Pat Hill after a year and a half. In 1976, she in turn sold it to Hermance and his business partner Arleen Olshan, whom Hermance bought out in '86. During his first six months of ownership, Hermance continued working as a librarian and then quit to work at the bookstore full time. Much of the store’s staff was composed of volunteers and the bookstore continues to be partly staffed by workers who donate their time.

In 1979, the building where Giovanni's was located changed hands, and the new owners of the building weren't exactly open-minded and did not want to rent to a gay and lesbian bookstore. Hermance and his partners were forced out. Unable to find a landlord willing to rent to a gay and lesbian bookstore, Hermance and Olshan had to buy a space. Since the bookstore didn't have the funds to bankroll the purchase of a building, Hermance appealed to his customers. A dozen lenders enabled Giovanni's Room to purchase the building at its current location on the corner of South 12th and Pine Streets and another 100 supporters helped remodel the building, installing a skylight and constructing bookshelves. Hermance eventually also bought the building next door, increasing Giovanni's square footage to 3,500 square feet. Doorways connect the buildings.

Though, of course, the gay rights movement has made great strides over the last three decades, Hermance said, "in many, many ways things have stayed the same," so a GLBT community space like Giovanni's Room remains a lifeline. Hermance said, "I still hear kids on the street calling other kids 'faggots,' which is a deadly thing for kids. They're not many places for them to go. Some of them adopt the bookstore as a place to hang out. We don't mind if they sit around and read. We're glad they feel comfortable here."

Author Edmund White talked with BTW about the importance of having a place like Giovanni's Room not only for the GLBT youth, but for the community as a whole. "It's one of the few gay bookstores left. It serves as a community center. Alcoholism is a real problem in the gay community, and it's important to have meeting places that don't involve drinking. It's also important to have a place where the booksellers really know their stock and can recommend titles."

About upcoming changes, Hermance mentioned that he wanted to start renting DVDs, which would provide the added bonus of greatly increasing foot traffic. It's another example of how the bookstore continues to stay dynamic, something that Hermance, who is 63, prides himself on and wants to see continue. "We have plainly crossed the generational divide. It's not like the community changed, and we only fulfilled one generation. [The store] is full of young people all the time. We now serve a completely different generation, one that was born after the store was founded. It's very satisfying." --Karen Schechner