116 E 59th Street, New York, NY

If your ideal bookstore is a quiet shop with green carpeting and dark wood, rife with that old book smell, then Argosy book store is perfect for you. Just blocks from the southeast corner of Central Park, it claims to be New York’s oldest independent bookstore, standing strong since 1925, and it certainly feels like it. With all the ancient prints and maps available throughout all six floors of the shop (I only explored the first), the winding staircases, the green desk lamps, and the floor-to-ceiling rows of gorgeously-bound antique volumes of poetry, fiction, and historical texts, you know you’re in a serious shop from the first moment you enter.