At the corner of Green Street, with panoramic windows offering views of where the city of Northampton and the campus meet, sits Smith College’s new bookstore. The inside is packed with Smith branded clothing, mugs and convenience store items. Conspicuously missing, though, is the long shelves full of books for classes that were a centerpiece of the old bookstore.
“It’s smaller in size…and confusing to navigate,” said Emily Jones ’26, who went to the bookstore to look for a textbook. “I liked the one in the CC better. It was more accessible, especially since I live in the Quad.”
The Grécourt Bookshop moved at the start of the Spring 2023 semester to 8 Green St., replacing the old bookstore on the ground floor of the Campus Center. The change was reviewed by the college’s building committee and the President’s Cabinet.
“The new bookstore is right next to where I live, so it is more convenient,” said Sierra Weirens ’23. “But the Campus Center was also a great location.”
“The consensus of opinion was the Green and West street corner location was a better place for the bookstore as it would increase visibility and ease of access for many visitors to campus,” said Jim Gray, Associate Vice President for Facilities and Operations. “It was also a visual way to create a sense of arrival at that important portal to campus, which is a plus.”
The change in bookstore location has produced mixed reactions. Some students appreciate the design of the new site, while others bemoan the location on the edge of campus and the smaller space.
“I think the location is like a real college bookstore, and it’s very pretty. I like looking out of Seelye and seeing it,” said Hala Anderson ’26. “If you have classes in Seelye or over in Ford, it’s still accessible enough that you’ll be over there at some point during the day.”
The new Grécourt Bookshop has huge windows spanning the length of the store, a big change from the old location which was in a basement. There have been no material changes in what the bookstore sells, but the new space is smaller than the old one.
The old space in the Campus Center is currently being used for Covid-19 PCR testing, which has previously been in two other Campus Center rooms. There is a planning process underway considering other uses for the old space, but, according to Gray, no decisions have been made.
The biggest change to the bookstore is that books requested by professors for their classes are now stored in an employee-only area, so students must ask store employees to retrieve them. As students made their visits to the new bookstore to get required books over syllabus week, this created some lines. However, students also have the option to order their books online and pick them up at the bookstore.
“I like the windows. I like being able to see outside. We’re getting new customers which is good,” said Shari McDonald, store manager at the bookstore. “Cons are obviously space. It’s much smaller. Students not being able to see their books, faculty not being able to see the books. Moving to a smaller space and the book accessibility have definitely been challenging.”
“We are still trying to get acclimated and figure out where things are going to go because we went from a big store to a much smaller space,” she said. Even in the smaller space, McDonald encourages students to visit. “We love seeing the faces of the students,” she said.
That’s where the 2 bookstores were when I was at Smith. The Quill and The Hampshire Bookstore. Those were the only bookstores. They sold books and everything else you could need. The theatre complex wasn’t there. And I lived in Dewey HOUSE.