Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
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continued from page 84 where the shop's rare books are neatly displayed. At press time, Gloss was negotiating the sale of one of John James Audubon's folios of animals for more than $500,000. The antiquarian bookshop was founded in 1825 in the Cornhill area of Boston (later known as Scollay Square) and has been owned by the Gloss family since 1949. After graduating from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a degree in chemistry, Gloss returned home to help his father, George, with the store, and never left. In 1980, a fire leveled the five-story store, and the Glosses lost everything. As devas- tating as it was, father and son picked up the pieces and rented on the block of their current location, West Street, until 1984 when they moved up the block to the storefront they've occupied for the past three decades. In that time, luxury residential buildings, tony university dorms, and the Ritz- Carlton, Boston Common have greatly changed the area around Brattle Book Shop, but Gloss's task remains the same: stock the store with books people can't live without. Gloss's first memories are of visiting estate sales with his father, where stacks of heavy volumes rose far over- head. He considers such fieldwork essential today. "Sometimes I go to two or three estate sales a day," says Gloss. "People want to see constant change in a used, rare bookstore like ours." Gloss has also sold priceless letters over the years, including a three-page epistle from J.R.R. Tolkien explaining his inspiration for The Lord of the Rings. He once appraised a handwritten four-page account of Paul Revere's infamous ride… written by Paul Revere. Gloss is often asked by libraries and museums to authenticate and price valuable items. "Years ago, when the state was building a new archive museum, they needed appraisals for a few important documents before they could be restored," says Gloss. "It was the Mayf lower Compact and an original Bill of Rights. I got to put my little finger on the corner of the documents. They actually shut down Route 93 North when the docu- ments went to be restored in North Andover." People don't always know what they have, whether they bring it to Gloss to appraise at the store, after one of his many lectures on rare books, or during one of his stints on the TV program Antiques Roadshow. He once spotted a signed original copy of the Declaration of Independence peeking out from a box of "old papers" that a woman had brought with her to one lecture. And what is Gloss most interested in personally? He smiles. "I'm a huge baseball fan, so I'm always looking for baseball books from the 19th cen- tury," he says. But one of the books he desires most is small, thin, and has a byline that says simply "A Bostonian." "It's called Tamerlane, and there are only a few copies of it remaining from the 50 printed," says Gloss. "That 'Bostonian' was Edgar Allan Poe, and it was the first poem he had pub- lished." If Gloss finds that treasure, it definitely won't be for sale, thank you. 9 West St., 617-542-0210; brattlebookshop.com BC RIGHT: Ken Gloss's family has operated the Brattle Book Shop since 1949. BELOW: It's been at its West Street location for the last three decades. "People want to see constant change in a used, rare bookstore like ours." KEN GLOSS ILLUSTRATION BY SARA FRANKLIN 86 BOSTONCOMMON-MAGAZINE.COM SECRET BOSTON 084-086_BC_SS_SecretBoston_LteSpr14.indd 86 4/4/14 10:33 AM