Rosengren's Books An Oasis for Mind and Spirit

Virtually every San Antonio citizen over a certain age with any interest in literature will have vivid memories of Rosengren’s Books. It was the absolute center of literary culture not only in San Antonio, but in Texas, for decades. Indeed, from the 1930s to the 1980s, Rosengren’s Books was considered one of the finest bookstores between New York and San Francisco. It was a mid-continent haven for writers as diverse as Frost, John Dos Pasos, J. Frank Dobie, and Larry McMurtry. Rosengren’s Books: An Oasis for Mind and Spirit is the story of a great American family of independent booksellers and the important literary institution they created. Beginning as a rare book store in Chicago, Frank and Florence Rosengren brought the store to San Antonio, Texas, in 1935. Located in various downtown locations, it became most well known as the charming book shop behind the Alamo, where it was visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists from around the world. At the heart of the story is Florence Rosengren, whom former San Antonio mayor Phil Hardberger calls the “Sylvia Beach of South Texas” and Texas Observer founding editor Ronnie Dugger described as “the chief guardian of civilization from here to Mexico City.”

Mary Carolyn Hollers George is an architectural historian whose work has focused on Texas and Mexico. She is the author of Alfred Giles: An English Architect in Texas and Mexico, The Architectural Legacy of Alfred Giles: Selected Restorations, Mary Bonner: Impressions of a Printmaker, and O’Neil Ford: Architect. She is a member of the Society of Architectural Historians and taught courses on the history of art and art appreciation for several years at San Antonio College. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.