Baldwin's Book Barn

There are places where history takes longer to give way to the present. Sites where history’s heralds sing of the world before.

Nowhere is this anachronistic choir heard more loudly than in Baldwin’s Book Barn. The structure containing today’s five-story Book Barn was built in 1822 and has exuded a timeless charm since, thanks to its cozy nooks, stone walls, wood-burning stove and seemingly never ending shelves of books, maps, and prints.

While the view from the outside is pristine, the true magic of Baldwin’s Book Barn, is how upon being inside, one is given the feeling the the Barn is “dimensionally transcendental”, meaning that its exterior and interior exist in separate dimensions. In fact the magic of Baldwin’s Book Barn is well encapsulated in its similarities with Doctor Who’s Time Machine Spacecraft, the TARDIS, both of which appear to buck the traditional confines of time, while boasting an interior much larger than it appears from the outside.

The Book Barn hides its seemingly endless archival treasure. Hidden within its meandering coves and staircases lie seemingly endless archival treasures lining every space within the Book Barn. Were its beams and masonry not exposed in spots, visitors would be forgiven for thinking the store simultaneously held and literally was built from books. The books and staircases and rooms appear to wrap around and into each other forever, in a nebulous analog to the “enormous expanse of adjacent hexagonal rooms” described in Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges’s The Library of Babel.

William and Lilla Baldwin first established their used book and collectible business in 1934 in nearby Wilmington, DE. In 1946 they moved to “The Barn”. The old milking house was converted into a residence for the Baldwin Family and the stone barn became the bookshop and, for some years, a country store museum. Baldwin’s Book Barn is located deep in the heart of the enchanting and historical Brandywine Valley, of Chester County, Pennsylvania. Chester County was one of the three original Pennsylvania counties created by William Penn in 1682, and was a center of naval shipbuilding. It was named for Chester, England. During the American Revolutionary War, the Battle of Brandywine was fought at what is now the southeastern fringe of the county. The Valley Forge encampment was at the northeastern edge. Baldwin’s is an inveterate and unique institution, a hot spot for history’s erupting into the present.

Baldwin’s Book Barn is one of America’s truly distinctive bookstores. Step inside and you are transported to another time and place; where history seems to whisper to you through the creaking windows and stairs of the barn. Today, Baldwin’s Book Barn is stuffed to the rafters with a treasure trove of 300,000 used and rare books, manuscripts, maps as well as fine paintings, prints, estate antiques, and other valued collectibles.