R.I.P. Prairie Avenue Bookshop
May31
The now-shuttered legendary Prairie Avenue Bookshop: gone, but never forgotten
“He’s an architect; I had it for breakfast,” Marilyn Hasbrouck says. She’s referring to her husband, Wilbert Hasbrouck, who chuckles and nods. We’re at the Prairie Avenue Bookshop, the venerable architecture bookstore they own in the Loop, in the shade of the overhead El tracks. I’m sitting between them at the head of a giant bankers table from Scotland, circa early 20th century (designer unknown), whose ivory-colored, high-backed chairs dwarf Marilyn and me, but suit the 6-foot-plus, gray-bearded “Bill” just fine. I don’t tell him, but he reminds me a bit of a tall Colonel Sanders, in suspenders instead of a string tie.
