“I got my very first collectible book when I was about 13 years old,” says Doug Phillips. “After school, practically every day, I would go to this wonderful bookshop called Main Street Bookstore, which stood where the Marriott hotel is now on Michigan Avenue. There was a lady that worked there named Mrs. Vandermark, and she was a very colorful, really nice lady, who was very helpful in getting me involved with books.” Captivated by the musical The King and I, Phillips enlisted Mrs. Vandermark to track down Anna Leonowens’s memoir, The English Governess at the Siamese Court, on which it was based. He still has the volume, but “it would take wild horses to get me to sell it.”
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Phillips’s vision for his store was born out of this wistfulness for an era of distinguished booksellers and cozy but refined bookshops. “There was a very, very famous bookman in the early part of the 1900s, A.E.S. Rosenbach, who had a wonderful bookstore. In his biography, which is just an amazing book to read, there are several pictures of his store, and I sort of loosely based my shop on his in New York. I don’t think my shop is as grand as his, but that was sort of my fantasy that I worked off of.”
Renowned Chicago architect and preservationist Wilbert Hasbrouck and his wife, Marilyn, founded Prairie School Press in 1961, reprinting and selling important works by and about, among others, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1964 the Hasbroucks established the quarterly journal Prairie School Review, which they published for 14 years and supported in part from the sales of books on the Chicago and Prairie Schools. After acquiring a building on Prairie Avenue, the Hasbroucks decided to open a bookshop on the ground floor, with Marilyn as proprietor. But the store soon outgrew that space, and in 1978–around the time Doug Phillips was embarking on his insurance career–Prairie Avenue Bookshop moved to 711 S. Dearborn, two doors from Phillips’s find. After 17 years the Hasbroucks moved again, to their current space on Wabash. Designed in the spirit of the Prairie School masters, the 9,000-square-foot store has original furniture by Wright, Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier and is widely recognized as one of the most beautiful bookstores in the world. Phillips, looking around in awe, knew he had to find the architect. He asked a young man, who proved to be the Hasbroucks’ son John, if he happened to know who it was. “Well, it was my dad,” he replied.
Shortly after opening he hired veteran bookseller Joe Fort to help him out. Fort, a lean 38-year-old with a narrow face and a shy smile, points out prized editions with quiet pride. He ran his own used-book store in Forest Park for 13 years, and Phillips was a frequent customer. Fort’s years in the business have helped Phillips make up for his own lack of retail experience.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Audrey Cho.
