Gach's Bookstore

John Gach bought the bookstore on the southwest corner of Greenmount and 34th Street in 1968 when he was in his early twenties. He hadn’t gone to college, but wanted to be a poet. In a 1972 interview, he told the Baltimore Sun, “"I knew nothing about the used-book business. Which may have been a blessing. I had no preconceptions. In fact, I had no conceptions whatsoever. I was wide-eyed and innocent."

Though lacking both formal education and business training, Gach’s  bookstore became what Mike Abromaitis, a Baltimore attorney and devoted patron,  described as a “bibliophilic mecca,” with books ranging from art history to science fiction and known especially for books by and about H. L. Mencken and Sigmund Freud. Johns Hopkins professor Robert Macksey said, “whenever I think of a bibliomaniac, his name comes up.”

“John had so many passions,” Macksey continued. In Gach’s obituary, published in the Sun in 2009, Macksey remembered, “In those early days, chess was one of them, and you practically had to beg him to get up and sell you a book."

Gach moved to larger quarters across the street at the corner of Venable and Greenmount in 1970, and within the next ten years Gach’s bookstore had become, in the words of longtime Sun reporter Jacques Kelly, “one of Baltimore's most thriving and serious dens of musty paper and brittle bindings."

Gach sold his interest in the bookstore in 1981 but continued to collect and sell used books by mail. The bookstore eventually moved to the old Boulevard Theatre in the 3300 block of Greenmount and was purchased by the Second Story Books used bookstore chain in the late 1980s. When Second Story closed in 1994, Kelly reported, “For the first time in over 40 years, there is no second-hand print mart at the corner of 33rd Street and Greenmount Avenue.”

Sources:

Abromaitis, Michael. Email correspondence to Carol Sue Abromaitis, Dec. 20, 2013; forwarded to Jean Lee Cole Dec. 21, 2013.

Kelly, Jacques. “Second-hand Bookstore Closes in Waverly.” Baltimore Sun, July 11, 1994. 

Rasmussen, Frederick N. “John P. Gach.” Baltimore Sun, Dec. 27, 2009.