To spot Powell’s Books, just look to the corner building with a bold marquee reading “POWELL’S BOOKS USED & NEW BOOKS” in big letters, right at the intersection, and you can’t miss the red and cream storefront buzzing with people heading in and out.
Welcome to Powell’s City of Books, the world’s largest independent bookstore-you’re standing in front of a place so big, some say you could get lost and emerge years later, a bit wiser and probably still 20 pages from finishing that novel! This book-lover’s paradise takes up a full city block, packed with over 68,000 square feet of retail space and more than four million new, used, rare, and out-of-print books. Step closer and imagine nine differently colored rooms, each one dedicated to a different world of stories, ideas, and characters, like a literary rainbow winding through Portland’s heart.
Let’s rewind to 1971-Walter Powell opens his bookstore in Portland, just as his son Michael is busy selling used and rare academic books in Chicago. A year later, the Powells combine their bookselling brilliance in Portland, and though an unlucky lease eviction could have ended their story early, they found this massive spot and wrote the next chapters. The store quickly grew into its quirky, sprawling headquarters where, in 1982, Michael bought the store from his father. Imagine the creak of floors as the shelves filled up, Powell’s growing not just in size but in legend-soon, branch stores started popping up, with snazzy white shelves and fancy banners hanging above the aisles out in the suburbs, a contrast to the “edgy” original neighborhood.
But Powell’s had even bigger dreams: in 1993, before almost anyone used the word “dot-com,” they set up an internet presence via email and FTP. By 1994, Powell’s had a website, beating Amazon to the punch-making it the grandparent of all online bookstores in a way. As the years ticked by, Powell’s cemented its status as a Portland icon. The store grew into what you see today after an expansion in 1999, which added the entrance facing the shiny new Pearl District. Above the door, check out the famous “Pillar of Books”-a sandstone sculpture depicting eight of the world’s great books stacked up, urging every visitor: “Buy the book, read the book, enjoy the book, sell the book” (in Latin, naturally, because why not add a bit of ancient wisdom to your reading adventure?).
Powell’s hasn’t just been the place to buy a book; it’s been a crossroads for Portland’s changing tides, from union battles-workers staking their claim in 1999, with tough negotiations, a dramatic snap election, and eventually a win for the little guy-to the wild ride of recent history. The store has weathered booms, strikes, layoffs, and, during the pandemic, saw its doors closed, its Internet store suddenly busier than a cat in a room full of laser pointers. And even in a world gone digital, Powell’s always found a way to adapt, from offering print-on-demand books with a machine called the “Espresso Book Machine” (sadly, it doesn’t serve coffee with your printing) to buying rare treasures like 7,000 books from Anne Rice’s personal library-enough vampires to last even the thirstiest reader.
Speaking of crowds, picture the scene in 2024, when Powell’s held its first-ever used book sale in their Northwest Portland warehouse-the line stretched all the way down the street, 10,000 patient booklovers armed with wish lists, caffeine, and a hope that just maybe, they’d find that one impossible-to-find paperback. Some waited five hours just to get in! Their devotion was rewarded: Powell’s is planning to do it all again, so keep an eye out if you’re back in town during July.
Walk through these doors and you’re not just entering a bookstore-you’re stepping into a living piece of Portland’s spirit, a place where the story of every Portlander and traveler who’s ever thumbed through a dog-eared copy lives on. So, take a deep breath, enjoy the smell of paper and coffee, and prepare yourself. You might be here for an hour or a week-either way, at Powell’s, there really is no such thing as too many books.
