The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door

Porter Garnett and the Laboratory Press

Porter Garnett, 1871-1951

Porter Garnett, a native of San Francisco, was prominent in West Coast literary activities and in fine printing.¹ He founded the Laboratory Press at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, teaching traditions, development and ideals of fine printing until the press closed in 1935.² The Laboratory Press was virtually unique in its time. The Laboratory Press was the first in American printing education to deliberately put aside commercial considerations in favor of aesthetic and intellectual ideals.³

Work from the Laboratory Press often dazzled its contemporaries, so clearly did it reveal a knowledge of both classical typographic traditions and preindustrial standards of technical execution. Most leading scholar-printers, bibliophile collectors, and rare book librarians of the day hailed the press as the bearer of the torch by which such enlightenment could pass safely to the next generation.⁴

Here is a specimen page⁵ produced by Charles Wesley Prew and approved for printing in January 13, 1927.

Porter Garnett Signed the Greenwich Village Bookshop Door

The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door (1920–25) separated the back office from the main area of Frank Shay's Bookshop in Greenwich Village from 1920 until 1925, where it served as an autograph book for nearly two hundred and fifty authors, artists, publishers, poets, and Bohemian creatives.⁶

Porter Garnett signed the door.⁷

The Harry Ransom Center mounted an exhibition, The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920–1925, from September 6, 2011, until January 22, 2012.⁸ For the duration of the exhibition The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door was installed in the middle of a gallery, on a custom blue base that exactly matched the color of the door.

"The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door: A Portal to Bohemia, 1920-1925," exhibit —available to view online—identified signatures, bringing back to life a corner of literary history where famous novelists rubbed shoulders with an eccentric cast of characters of the sort unlikely to be found stumbling around the highly gentrified Village of today. Along with luminaries like Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos and Sherwood Anderson, the door records the passage of forgotten poets, socialist pamphleteers, suffragists, Ziegfeld girls and multitasking oddballs.⁹

1. Porter Garnett Papers. Online Archive of California. Photographs from Boxes 1-4 transferred to the Pictorial Collections of The Bancroft Library (BANC PIC 1905.14743-.14835--PIC, BANC PIC 1953.019--PIC and BANC PIC 1985.039--PIC)

Porter Garnett, a native of San Francisco, was prominent in West Coast literary activities and in fine printing. He co-founded "The Lark" with Gelett Burgess, was a dramatic and literary critic, an assistant curator at The Bancroft Library (1907-12), and founder of the Laboratory Press while professor of graphic arts at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (1922-35). Garnett was also an active member of the Bohemian Club.

2. Benton, M L. 1992. “Orchids from Pittsburgh, an Appraisal of the Laboratory Press, 1922-1935.” Library Quarterly 62 (1): 28–54.

3. Laboratory Press. Garnett, Porter. A Documentary Account of the Beginnings of the Laboratory Press, Carnegie Institute of Technology, for private distribution, Pittsburgh: The Laboratory Press, 1927.

4. Benton, Megan L. “Orchids from Pittsburgh: An Appraisal of the Laboratory Press, 1922-1935.” The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy 62, no. 1 (1992): 28–54.

5. Laboratory Press : metal type composition the old-fashioned way. Lead Grafitti. April 3, 2018.

6. Schuessler J. If this door could talk . . New York Times Book Review. 2011:31-

7. Porter Garnett: The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door (utexas.edu)

8. The Door: The Greenwich Village Bookshop Door. Harry Ransom Center Exhibit. University of Texas -Austin.

9. Schuessler J. If this door could talk . . New York Times Book Review. 2011:31-