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Cookbook shop cradles rare books in NYC house that time forgot

2026-05-15

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Off the beaten path in Manhattan's Hudson Square, surrounded by high-rises, sits a house time seems to have forgotten. Inside is something magical.

"What to me makes a good book? Inside front covers like this. I think it's so special. I love it," Joanne Hendricks said.

Joanne Hendricks Cookbooks is a shop filled with rare and out-of-print titles. Simple directions for the laundress. Family living on $500 a year. Books about gardening, pickles and more all line the shelves.

"Oh my gosh. And then the people who come in and buy them, it just makes me so touched," Hendricks said.

For years, the space was just storage. Hendricks said she bought the house in 1975 and watched it evolve over time. "I said, I have to do something with my life," she said.

Then she did something bold, sending a postcard to The New York Times announcing she was opening a cookbook shop. She said the response was exciting but terrifying. A photographer came, and Hendricks worried she didn't yet feel like a scholar.

"I had fewer books on the shelf because I was just evolving," she said. Over time, she added wallpaper and a window.

Decades later, the shop has become a charming, enchanted world of its own, filled with books on nearly every subject imaginable.

"Just special little things," Hendricks said. "Baking and pastry section. This one is a teeny tiny book. How beautiful with the tiles and the pottery."

And Hendricks has made extraordinary signs amid her collection. "I found a book full of four-leaf clovers. It was so, so special," she said.

Hendricks spent decades in the business, first working in a bookshop while she was in college. "I can't leave a book behind," she said. "But I know I can leave other things behind."

She said it can be heartbreaking when customers buy entire selections from her shop, but she finds comfort knowing they are going to good homes.

Hendricks said she fell for cookbooks because they felt easy to understand and personal. "I've made these," she said, laughing while looking through titles like "Food of the Future" from the 1800s.

After 50 years in the same house, surrounded by an ever-changing city, Hendricks' little cookbook shop stands as a reminder that some things are worth preserving.

"I like having the books," Hendricks said. "I really like books. I like seeing where I need to fill in more books because I need to have books for everybody."

She said it means a lot when people come into her shop looking for a meaningful gift.

"It's so nice when people feel like they need to buy a present here for somebody. It's so special. It just makes me so happy."

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