Upul Kumara

Shakespeare & Co.

Shakespeare & Co. is an iconic independent bookstore founded in Manhattan in 1983. In 2018 Shakespeare & Co. expanded to multiple brick-and-mortar locations in New York City and Philadelphia with further expansion slotted for 2019. Its store at 939 Lexington Avenue, adjacent to the Hunter College campus, has been a staple of the Upper East Side neighborhood for over 20 years but was brought under new management and ownership in May of 2015. Since then, the Lexington Avenue store has been renovated to include a high-quality café and the patented 'Espresso Book Machine'​, which can produce on-site, bookstore-quality books in minutes from a catalog of over 7,000,000 in-copyright and public domain titles. All Shakespeare & Co. locations will be based on the same mold: part bookstore, part cafe and part printing press.