Beloved Bookstore Ends Its Story

Architect or not, and whether they have known the store for four decades or just one, some customers have made a habit of turning up on Saturdays for the free-flowing discussions.

"Many people don't go there for the books," Norden says, recalling times she has often overheard customers engaged in "deeply intellectual conversation with Dick."

"I say they run a salon," she says.

That sense of a salon may have its roots with namesake Franz Bader himself. An Austrian Jew who fled the Nazis, he arrived in the United States in 1939 with wife Antonia, $12 and the promise of a job at the Whyte Gallery and Bookshop. He rose through the company ranks and along the way developed a passion for art.

In 1953, he opened his own store, Franz Bader Gallery and Bookshop, at 17th and G streets NW. As his interest in promoting artists increased, the space for books declined and a move to Pennsylvania Avenue found the bookstore occupying a small space in the back of the gallery.

While Bader was busy discovering local artists and hosting shows of their work, he left the running of the bookstore to a series of young people who were versed in art and foreign languages. Customers received guidance about the latest titles the store imported from Europe, and along the way some forged lifelong friendships.

Sabine Breu, a young German immigrant, applied for a job in 1966. Breu had a background in design and was looking for a temporary position after working as an au pair. The job enveloped much more of her life than intended, however. Breu attracted the notice of a customer, art historian Richard Yanul.

"I sold him a hardcover when I knew full well there was a paperback" of the same book, she says with a chuckle. Richard Yanul became a loyal patron and later her husband, and never let her forget that book.

In 1985, when Bader retired, he sold the store to the Yanuls. Private art dealer Wretha Hansen bought the gallery. The two businesses split two years later, with the bookstore moving to its current location, around the corner from the World Bank.

Richard Yanul credits his wife with expanding the selection of books and keeping an eye out for titles she thinks customers will enjoy.

"She has a much better sense [than I do] of what will sell and what will not sell," he says. "Sabine was the one who wanted to go into architecture more" 20 years ago, when publishers sharply increased the number of books available on the subject.

Sabine Yanul believes they could have remained open for a few more years, but once the rent nearly doubled, things seemed to decide themselves.

Property owners Tishman Speyer said in a statement that the bookstore has been a good tenant, adding, "We would have liked it to remain at the property, and we offered the owner a lease renewal at a rent consistent with current market rates."

No thank you, the Yanuls decided.

They're trading six-day workweeks for retirement. Their lease is up at the end of the month.

"It probably hasn't sunk in yet," Sabine Yanul noted recently just before the store began marking down its inventory and the shelves were not as bare as they are now. "When the catalogues come, I say, 'I would like that,' but then I have to say, 'No, I don't have a store anymore.' "