Portsmouth Book and Bar

A sophisticated emporium of culture, on the grand canvas of Market square, located in the first floor of the historic granite Customs Houe

The three of us, John Petrovato, David Lovelace & Jon Strymish, have worked together on various bookstores and cafes for over two decades. We are currently building a unique blend of bookstore, cafe and wine/beer bar for downtown Portsmouth. Collectively we have over 75 years of owning bookstores and cafes in New England. Our other locations offer highly selective used and discount titles and host readings, music and community events. Our vision for Portsmouth couples all this with an upscale café serving espresso, baked goods and small plates. We plan to push past the all too familiar hybrid of stale muffins and paperbacks, create bookstore cafe with European flair – a literary salon with fine books and wines.

The bookstore will resemble John Petrovato’s two Boston area shops, Raven Books in Harvard Square and on Newbury Street. The bookstore will stock around 15,000 well selected titles with an emphasis on literature and the arts. The Raven’s are not musty bookshops but have established themselves as two of the best shops in the country. In fact, as opposed to the growing trend of bookstores closing, both Raven’s have had their best year yet in 2011. The Raven won The Boston Globe’s “best of the new” in 2010, and The Boston Phoenix’s reader’s poll in 2011 and has been featured on MSN’s website and a dozens of other literary journals and magazines.

Jon Strymish recently sold New England Mobile Book Fair in Newton, MA. NEMB was a highly respected as well as the largest independent bookstore in New England for the past 2 decades.

Over the past twenty years, David Lovelace’s store, The Montague Bookmill, has become an iconic cultural presence in Western Massachusetts. The bookmill had been co-owned with both John Petrovato and Jon Strymish over the past 20 years. The bookstore, café and performance space has been featured numerous times in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and Yankee Magazine. After selling the Bookmill, Dave wrote and published a book with Penguin.

The Cafe will offer espresso and pastries in the morning and move on to creative small plates through the evenings. We will feature a small, handpicked selection of fine wines and micro beers to complement the food. Our readings and musical acts will showcase both local and national acts. We are experienced and connected – we’ve booked music for 20 years. Our intention is not to build a nightclub but to book events that nicely complement the bookstore.

Even as more and more titles are downloaded, as the opportunity for browsing fine books shrinks, the surviving independent will become increasingly valued and the very presence of beautifully bound books will provide a rare pleasure. We believe bookshops can do more than survive but actually flourish by offering a palpable sense of place. Working closely with Jon Lannan, an architect with the Nathan Sargent Company, we will create a unique and striking look to our commercial space.