Marks & Co, 84 Charing Cross Road 1976

A wonderfully evocative view of Marks & Co., one of the most famous antiquarian and second-hand bookshops in the world, captured just a few years before it closed. Founded in the late 19th century and long established at 84 Charing Cross Road, the shop earned global renown through the publication of 84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff’s much-loved correspondence with the staff of Marks & Co., charting two decades of transatlantic book-buying from 1949 to 1968.

By 1976, the shop’s Victorian frontage — gold lettering, dark woodwork, deep display windows — was already beginning to show its age, but inside it remained a bibliophile’s paradise: dusty shelves, rare first editions, and knowledgeable staff able to track down almost anything. Signs in the window advertise “New and second-hand books” and valuations, capturing the shop exactly as it traded for almost a century.

Marks & Co. closed in 1970, but the name lingered on the façade for several years afterwards while the premises transitioned to other use, making this photo a valuable record of the building in the mid-1970s, its famous signage still intact. Today the site is occupied by a branch of McDonald’s, but for book lovers, 84 Charing Cross Road will always belong to Marks & Co., and to the people whose letters turned a small London bookshop into a literary legend.