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35-451: The store was opened January 1, 1920, by Frances Steloff . Steloff's husband, David Moss, suggested both the store's name and its "Wise Men ..." motto, which was inspired by Washington Irving . Steloff nurtured the store as a literary sanctuary for the avant-garde, distributing copies of the banned Lady Chatterley's Lover , Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer , and safeguarded Anais Nin's books when she fled Paris. Under Steloff's oversight,

70-509: A Manhattan bookstore, and he sought to help the Gotham re-establish its presence in the city when the owner had sold its long-time building and needed a new space. Lauder bought a building at 16 East 46th Street along with a partner, letting the building's storefront space to the Gotham. Later, the Gotham fell behind on rents, eventually resulting in Lauder and his partner to file for eviction. In

105-701: A bid of only $ 400,000 by the representative of the landlords. In late 2008, the University of Pennsylvania received over 200,000 items from the Gotham Book Mart's inventory as an anonymous gift. Penn will catalog the Gotham Book Mart Collection and make it available for teaching and research. Penn will also digitize materials from the Collection, and create public events such as lectures and exhibits based on its contents. In

140-539: A few months old. It's impossible to imagine New York City without it." The director Woody Allen , a frequent customer of film books at the shop, referred to it as "everyone's fantasy of what the ideal bookshop is." After Steloff died in 1989 at age 101, Brown moved into the apartment above the shop, living there until later selling the building. The shop was full of photos of the authors and other notable figures who frequented it, as well as signage and other visual puns that were full of literary humor and references, such as

175-567: A much-publicized closure of the bookstore, the New York City Marshal later auctioned the store's inventory, which was bought in a lot by Lauder and his partner to some protest from many other independent book sellers and collectors who were present at the proceedings and hoping to purchase some of the bibliophilic treasures. Lauder has long been a major benefactor of the Whitney Museum of American Art . In 1971, he joined

210-464: A real estate developer, arranged to buy the building for $ 5.2 million in order to assist the Gotham and Brown by leasing it back to him. In 2006, the store fell behind in its monthly $ 51,000 (~$ 77,081 in 2023) rent, and the landlords initiated eviction proceedings. A judge authorized the city marshal to seize the inventory. There were various stories for why Brown fell behind in the rent. According to him, he had recently endured three hernia operations and

245-826: A trustee of the Aspen Institute , chairman of The Aspen Institute International Committee, honorary chair of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and a member of the President's Council of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital . Along with his wife, Evelyn, he helped create the Evelyn H Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. In February 2022, he donated $ 125 million to University of Pennsylvania to establish

280-571: Is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania , and he also studied at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business before serving as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy . He joined Estée Lauder in 1958 when he was 25. He created the company's first research and development laboratory in the mid-1990s and was responsible for the company acquiring brands like MAC , Bobbi Brown and Aveda . Under his leadership in

315-613: Is a major art collector (he began by buying Art Deco postcards when he was six), but his particular focus, rather than on American artists, is on works by the Cubist masters Picasso , Braque , Gris , and Léger . He also collects Klimt . Much of his art comes from some of the world's most celebrated collections, including those of Gertrude Stein , the Swiss banker Raoul La Roche , and the British art historian Douglas Cooper . In 2012,

350-781: Is an American billionaire , philanthropist, art collector. He and his brother, Ronald Lauder , are the sole heirs to the Estée Lauder Companies cosmetics fortune, founded by their parents, Estée Lauder and Joseph Lauder, in 1946. Having been its CEO until 1999, Lauder is the chairman emeritus of The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. During his tenure as the CEO, the company went public at The New York Stock Exchange in 1996 and acquired several major cosmetics brands, including MAC Cosmetics , Aveda , Bobbi Brown , and La Mer . In 2013, Lauder promised his collection of Cubist art to The Metropolitan Museum of Art . The collection

385-590: Is valued at over $ 1 billion and constitutes one of the largest gifts in the museum's history. Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimated Lauder's net worth at US$ 32.3 billion as of September 2021, the 44th richest person in the world. Lauder is the elder son of Joseph and Estée Lauder and the elder brother of Ronald Lauder . His family is Jewish. He married Evelyn Hausner in July 1959. They had two sons, William , executive chairman of The Estée Lauder Companies , and Gary, managing director of Lauder Partners LLC. He

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420-621: The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston opened an exhibition of 700 of his postcards, a tiny part of the promised gift he has made to the museum of 120,000 postcards: The Postcard Age: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection . In an interview in The New Yorker , Lauder explained how postcards turned him into a collector, and how these "mini-masterpieces" remained his lifelong pursuit to

455-551: The James Joyce Society at the store in 1947. According to its writer Robbie Robertson , the line "Take a load off, Fanny" in his well known song " The Weight " was inspired by Steloff, whose bookstore he visited. Steloff married David Moss in 1923. They divorced in 1930. This article about an American businessperson born in the 1880s is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Leonard Lauder Leonard Alan Lauder (born March 19, 1933)

490-600: The Whitney. The fifth-floor permanent collection galleries are named for the couple. In 1998, he told a reporter for The New York Times that his "dream job" was to be the Whitney Museum's director. Most recently, Lauder gave $ 131 million for the Whitney's endowment. A long-time supporter of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, Lauder led the creation of a research center for Modern art at

525-407: The age of 19, she moved to New York where she worked at Loeser's, a department store. She then worked in several bookstores, and in 1920 founded the Gotham Book Mart. She challenged government censorship, ordering smuggled copies of Henry Miller 's Tropic of Cancer in the 1930s and purchasing shipments of D. H. Lawrence 's banned book Lady Chatterley's Lover in the late 1920s. She founded

560-459: The author. Brown was named as one of the coexecutors of Gorey's estate, after he died in 2000. The history of the store is covered in the documentary film, Frances Steloff: Memoirs of a Bookseller , directed in 1987 by Deborah Dickson. The building at 41 West 47th Street that housed the Gotham Book Mart for the longest period of its existence was purchased by Steloff from Columbia University in 1946 for $ 65,000. Somewhere in between, after selling

595-465: The building was sold for $ 7.2 million (~$ 11.4 million in 2023) to Boris Aranov, who also owned another adjacent building. Brown reopened the store under a slightly new name, "The Gotham Book Mart & Gallery", in 2004 just a few blocks away at 16 East 46th Street in the store space previously occupied by the H. P. Kraus rare books store. Leonard Lauder , a cosmetics industry billionaire and executive of Estée Lauder Companies , and Edmondo Schwartz,

630-509: The building, and she wanted her money returned with interest. Carson had apparently become acquainted with Brown through their mutual friendship with Truman Capote . Brown and Carson met after Capote's death while Brown was appraising Capote's papers. In 1997, the suit was settled, with Brown agreeing to pay her back $ 1.4 million by February 28 of the year 2000. In 2001, Brown put the five-story town house building up for sale with an asking price of $ 7.9 million (~$ 13 million in 2023). In 2003,

665-401: The closures of a number of other venerable bookstores during the same period. On May 22, 2007, the city auctioned off the store's inventory to a small crowd each of whom had put down a $ 1,000 (~$ 1,469 in 2023) deposit in order to attend. Attendees included book collectors and other book store owners. Ultimately, the estimated $ 3 million worth of inventory was all bought up in one large lot for

700-712: The company and is known around the company as "Chief Teaching Officer". Lauder gained notoriety in 2001 for creating the Lipstick index , a since discredited economic indicator , meant to reflect a proclivity to spend money on luxury items even in the face of crisis. For many years, he has resided on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. On January 1, 2015, Lauder married photographer Judy Ellis Glickman. Leonard Lauder, unlike his brother, supported Kathy Hochul 's first campaign for New York governor in 2022. Lauder

735-424: The fact that Barnes & Noble opened a bookstore just around the corner from the Gotham, and also that general book-buying habits of consumers had shifted with the advent of the internet age. The primary factors affecting the store appears to have been a combination of the rising rent for real estate in Manhattan, competition from book superstores, and Brown's mismanagement of the business—factors which influenced

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770-815: The late 1980s, Estée Lauder opened its first store in Moscow with support from the Gosbank daughter the Moscow Narodny Bank Limited in London . In 1986, Lauder hosted a New York City luncheon attended by Donald Trump and Soviet Ambassador to the United States Yuri Dubinin during which Trump hashed out his partnership with the Kremlin . Lauder stepped down as CEO of Estée Lauder in 1999, but remains chairman emeritus of

805-514: The most important collection any private person has put together in many, many years," Art historian Emily Braun , who co-organized the 2014 Met exhibition of Lauder's Cubist collection with Rebecca Rabinow, has served as Leonard Lauder's personal curator since 1987. Lauder is co-founder and chairman of the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation , a member of the Council on Foreign Relations ,

840-475: The museum's acquisitions board and in 1977, by then president of his family's business, he became a Whitney trustee. He became president in 1990 and has been chairman since 1994. He has donated both money and many works of art to the Whitney, and is the museum's most prolific fundraiser. His 2008 donation to it of $ 131 million is the largest in the museum's history. Through the Leonard and Evelyn Lauder Fund, he and his wife have also sponsored several exhibitions at

875-476: The museum, which he helped support through a $ 22 million endowment made alongside museum trustees and other benefactors. In April 2013, he promised his collection of 81 pieces of Cubist art, consisting of 34 pieces by Pablo Picasso , 17 by Georges Braque , 15 by Fernand Léger , and 15 by Juan Gris to the museum; together, they are valued at more than one billion dollars. It has been described by William Acquavella , of Acquavella Galleries , as "without doubt

910-439: The names of Steloff's and Brown's cats: Thornton (Wilder), Christopher (Morley), Mitchell (Kennerley), and (Thomas) Pynchon. A great deal of the shop's inventory was in storage unavailable to the general public, as the proprietors obtained stock from literary estates, general overflow stock, and other books set aside for future sale after appreciating. Brown sometimes referred to book storage cellars as "the catacombs". The Gotham

945-531: The point where his late wife, Evelyn, called the collection his "mistress". He donated his collection of Oilette postcards, published by Raphael Tuck & Sons , to Chicago's Newberry Library , and funded their digitization; the Newberry launched the 26,000-item Tuck digital collection in 2019. Lauder's interest in postcards led him to be acquainted with one of the owners of the Gotham Book Mart ,

980-634: The spring of 2019, Penn Libraries displayed a collection of the Gotham Book Mart collection at the Kislak Center for Rare Books, Collections and Manuscripts. The exhibit, called "Wise Men Fish Here", contained 300 items and was hosted at the Van Pelt Library . Many notable authors, celebrities, and major figures involved in publishing were customers of the store and friends with the owners and staff. The Nobel Prize committee in Stockholm

1015-405: The store and later sold it in 1967 to book lover Andreas Brown. Upon selling the store to Brown, Steloff told him that he was not the owner, but the caretaker or custodian. Steloff continued working at the store as a consultant after selling it. Arthur Miller said that the store was an invaluable source of books "... for research of all kinds, and perhaps above all for literature that is more than

1050-492: The store became a meeting place for the literati and 20th century cultural icons, essentially serving as a literary salon . In February 1947, the James Joyce Society was founded at the Gotham; John J. Slocum (a Joyce bibliographer) was its first president and Steloff its first treasurer. The first member was T. S. Eliot . The success of the store was partly due to Steloff's demanding nature and attention to quality, as well as business acumen. Steloff lived in an apartment above

1085-718: The store to Andreas Brown, Steloff donated the building to the American Friends of the Hebrew University Foundation with the proviso that they give Brown the option to later buy it back at $ 1,000,000. In 1987, Steloff filed suit to enforce the intended proviso, and the two parties apparently settled. In 1988, Andreas Brown bought the building back from them for $ 1,000,000 (~$ 2.22 million in 2023). In 1995, Joanne Carson (second wife of Johnny Carson ) filed suit against Brown, alleging she had loaned him $ 640,000 in 1988 and 1991 to purchase and repair

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1120-457: Was credited for promoting and building the success and career of author/artist Edward Gorey . Gorey and Brown became friends, so the store favored Gorey after Brown assumed ownership. The store became the commercial flagship of Gorey's works, selling his books, calendars, greeting cards, T-shirts, and other products. The store published 15 of Gorey's books and the store gallery hosted exhibitions of Gorey's illustrations, as well as public signings by

1155-405: Was known to order copies of books from the Gotham when they were considering various authors for the prize. Authors and celebrities who frequented and shopped at the store: 40°45′20″N 73°58′41″W  /  40.7555°N 73.9780°W  / 40.7555; -73.9780 Frances Steloff Ida Frances Stelov (December 31, 1887 – April 15, 1989), better known as Fanny Steloff ,

1190-479: Was struggling to save the store from closing by inventorying the over $ 3 million worth of books and posting them on the internet. In the months since the move from the previous location, the staff appeared to have failed to get any of the inventory online. By other accounts, he may have lost momentum after the transition of selling and moving from the old building, and he may have invested too much in more book inventory. Other factors that could have been involved included

1225-527: Was the founder of the Gotham Book Mart in New York City , a center for avant-garde literature and literati from 1920 until it closed in 2007. Ida Frances Stelov was born to a poor family in Saratoga Springs, New York on December 31, 1887. Her mother died when she was young, and at 12 she was taken in by a couple who offered her a home. She dropped out of school in the seventh grade. At

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