The Last Bookbinder on the Lower East Side
24th December 2016
In 1980, according to the census taken that year, there were 1,500 bookbinders in New York. A great number of them plied the trade in downtown Manhattan, on the Lower East Side, among the garment workers, delicatessens and dive bars. Of that proud and once ample contingency—the binders of the Lower East Side—now there is only Henry. Henry is not his given legal name. It’s the name of the street where he works and has worked for most of his adult life. At some point, the shop became known as Henry Bookbinding, and he as Henry. It’s that kind of pragmatic thinking and come-what-may attitude, perhaps, that keeps business humming.