Originally from Cincinnati, Gregory Kornbluh traveled all over the country looking at books, perfecting the bookstore of his dreams in his mind.
Now Kornbluh and his dream have returned to Cincinnati’s Northside.
Downbound Books opened on October 25 at the corner of Apple and Knowlton streets. The independent bookstore specializes in small-press fiction, non-fiction works on history, politics and social science, craft books, cookbooks and picture books.
“While we will do our best to offer a wide and hopefully unexpected range of books, a shop of our size cannot rightly claim to have something for everyone,” he said. declared. “But maybe we have it all for someone.”
Kornbluh said in a press release that he and his partner Sarah Fischer were excited to hear more about local reader interests, but his and Fischer’s likes “will always come out.”
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And it is, right down to the shelves themselves.
Go home to build your dream
The dream has always been to have a small store that can accommodate lots of books while maintaining a clean, minimalist feel, Kornbruh said.
And what better way to do it, he thought, than to build it himself.
All of the shelving and furniture in the 500-square-foot bookstore was handcrafted by Kornbluh with help from his father, retired architect John Kornbluh.
The books are a mix of the likes of Kornbluh and Fischer, with Fischer taking care of the store’s cookbook and children’s sections.
Kornbluh and Fischer met as classmates at Sands Montessori and Walnut Hills High School. But for the past 13 years, Kornbluh has been on the East Coast, working briefly as a bookseller in a boutique outside of Boston, then mostly in the sales and marketing department of Harvard University Press.
“I was lucky enough to travel a lot for work and at each stop I visited as many bookstores as I could. Over the years the outlines of my dream bookstore became increasingly clear,” a- he declared. “We’ve only been open for a few days, but so far I’m really, really pleased that people seem to be seeing it the way I hoped.”
Downbound Books is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, the statement said. Expanded hours will begin soon and the lineup of events and book club will be announced for the new year.
“We aim to be an old-school neighborhood bookstore,” Kornbluh said. “But I hope people all over the city will find it worth the trip.”