The large two-story barn, red with green trim, is piled from floor to cieling with books of all shapes, sizes and genres. “I’ve never counted how many books I have,” the owner said glibly. “At night I close the doors and they multiply.”

To reach this magical place, owned and operated by Vladimir Dragan ’85, hop in your car (or a friend’s car, or a cab) and head north on Route 13 for about 10 miles until you have to turn left to stay on 13.

Once you make this left, continue going straight until you reach a fork in the road. Take the road on the left, and pull into the first driveway on the right to find yourself at A Book Barn of Finger Lakes — it’s the first driveway on the right and straight on till morning, as one classic figure in literature once said.

Picture Perfect: Owner Vladimir Dragan ’85 stands outside A Book Barn of Finger Lakes, housed in a red barn out in Dryden.Picking Through the Paper Trail: Ithaca is home to many bookstores, full of countless varieties of used and new books.BOOKS-A-MILLION, ITHACA STYLE: Take a look inside Autumn Leaves Used Books, which has been open for 16 years. The store stocks about 60,000 books, according to owner Joseph Wetmore.There’s nothing cozier than curling up with a book on a brisk Ithaca fall day and losing yourself in another world, one without prelims and the wind and that paper that was supposed to be turned in yesterday. Luckily, Ithaca has several gems of independent bookstores that can help you discover just the right book to fuel your imagination; they can be found throughout the Ithaca area, ranging from the scenic location of A Book Barn of Finger Lakes to just down the street from the Cornell campus.

On a short drive down Buffalo Street, one of the first most noticeable storefronts you will come across is Buffalo Street Books, a picture of a bespectacled Buffalo reading a book on the awning. When you enter, you will be greeted by a brightly lit space with book titles beckoning at you from each shelf. According to owner Gary Weissbrot, Buffalo Street Books — previously known as the Bookery II — is the only independently owned new bookstore within a 35-mile radius.

“I think bookstores are very important parts of the community, and historically most communities have had multiple bookstores,” Weissbrot said. “Till not that many years ago, this town had over half a dozen new bookstores.”

However, Weissbrot said that the introduction in the early 2000s of the “big box stores,” the Borders and Barnes and Nobles of the world, had a big impact on the independent bookstores in the area. The popularity of Internet book buying increased soon after, which left Buffalo Street Books as the only new bookstore left standing.

Buffalo Street Books relies on its strong local base to keep going, according to Weissbrot. “We are still a very important part of the community,” he said. “This is a very literary community and any community that has any kind of cultural life needs places you can go to find new books, be able to browse, etc.”

To facilitate a welcoming atmosphere, Buffalo Street Books regularly hosts events such as readings, fundraisers for various community based organizations and a new series in which authors read aloud part of works destined for publication.

Weissbrot explained that each book in the store is hand selected, either by him or by staff members with particular fields of expertise. When selecting books, they not only select books that are interesting to them personally but also choose books that they feel would be interesting to the community as a whole. Buffalo Street Books also sells any local author that asks to be sold there.

“One of the things that’s so wonderful about independent bookstores is that a good independent bookstore is a reflection of its community,” Weissbrot said.

Many Cornell and Ithaca College professors are now using Buffalo Street Books as a place for students to find course books. Weissbrot said that this is a result of the support of the professors, who amongst other things, are trying to encourage students to go into bookstores. “Unfortunately,” Weissbrot explained, “almost a whole generation isn’t familiar with just a bricks and mortar bookstore, so many students have never been in a bookstore. They’re used to buying things online — like a heat seeking missile they know what they want, they go to it online and they get it ordered and delivered to their door.”

“Every independent bookstore you walk into, you have to make discoveries because they’re all different,” Weissbrot concluded.

Now, let step outside Buffalo Street Books — if it’s a nice day, you can go outside and walk around the corner to enter DeWitt Mall, but if it’s one of those windy, rainy Ithaca days you can just take the back exit out of Buffalo Street Books straight into DeWitt Mall to encounter the next stop on our trip, The Bookery. And when you enter the store, you are immediately assailed by the smell of books ripe for the picking.

Owned and operated by Jack Goldman, The Bookery started out in 1975 as a small used bookstore in a space across the hall from its current location — the space actually used to be the safe for DeWitt High School, and the door was still the original bank vault type with a combination lock.

Goldman himself was a Cornell grad student who dropped out of grad school during the Vietnam War in order to devote time to protesting the war. He helped start a press that ran out of what was later ABC Café — he produced anti-war literature and, in general, “tried to raise hell.” After the war ended he opened The Bookery instead of returning to grad school.

The Bookery has now expanded to have around 10 to 15 thousand books on location (many are not on display, as they are in the basement underneath the store) and around 25 thousand books online. The Bookery is unique in that it holds a higher percentage of scholarly and rare books than in most other used bookstores.

“Sometimes I wonder myself where all the books come from,” joked Goldman. He said that he has ties with many people through his time at Cornell and his long residency in Ithaca. Although many visiting professors and tourists come through the store, Goldman said that the majority of his customers are locals.

Five years after opening The Bookery, Goldman noticed that there was a lack of a source for travel and foreign language books in the community, so he decided to fill that niche by opening the Bookery II, which would specialize in these types of books. Over the years, the Bookery II evolved to become a general new bookstore until several years ago, when he sold it to Weissbrot — the new owner recently renamed the store Buffalo Street Books.

“Ithaca at one point was known for having more bookstores per capita than any town of its size — the heyday was in the 80s to 90s,” Goldman reminisced.

The Commons is home to another of Ithaca’s book havens: Autumn Leaves Used Books, which is easily spotted by its brightly colored sign in the front and another sign with a picture of an owl on it pointing to The Owl Café on its second floor.

Autumn Leaves opened 16 years ago in another store across the Commons but has since then expanded to its current location. Owner Joseph Wetmore said that most of the books are from people who have brought them in, interested in simply selling books they no longer want, often for store credit. Wetmore also goes around to book sales himself searching for interesting books.

“I say we have 60,000 books here, but who’s counting?” said Wetmore with a smile. He added that in general Ithacans are a very literate community and they do a lot of reading, so he has a steady clientele base. There is also a big tourist trade downtown and a good student academic trade that help to support Autumn Leaves. In addition to books, Autumn Leaves also sells old records, of which they have around 10,000.

“I’ve always been a fan of used bookstores,” Wetmore said. “I love the search and experience of finding new books, a wonderful whole story can unfold from finding an interesting book.”

Leaving Autumn Leaves for the cozy confines of your car (or a friend’s car, or a cab) and heading north on Route 13, the search continues for bookstores scattered across the Ithaca area. After about five and a half miles you reach a large red barn with the word “BOOKS” painted on it in large white letters, and a smaller sign saying “Phoenix Books” outside the entrance.

According to owner George Schillinger, Phoenix Books was opened in 1985 by a woman named Elizabeth Morrison — Schillinger took over in 1995. The barn was originally a cow barn built in 1890 and now holds around 90 thousand used books.

“I buy them pretty much everywhere I can get them, anywhere I can get them,” Schillinger said.

Schillinger said that his customer base is fairly mixed, since people do have to travel a little bit out of town to get to the store. Many tourists come through but there is also a loyal contingent of locals who stop by regularly.

Schillinger first started out by working in a used bookstore in New Hampshire, but he moved to Ithaca when the opportunity arose for him to run Phoenix Books.

“I do like it here, Ithaca’s a really good place to live,” he said. “The books are pretty good here, although the population density is a lot less than in New England so it’s a little sparser that way. It’s not quite as easy to buy books here.”

Schillinger says that his store occupies a particular niche — if the book is new, he probably doesn’t have it, as it takes a couple of years for books to get down to him. At the same time, he has books dating back to the 1600s, books that the big box stores are never going to have in stock. Also, his books are much cheaper, so if, for example, Barnes and Noble has a book for $6, he would probably have it for $3.50.

“I really just like to put books on the shelves and hope that someone comes in and finds something that they love,” Schillinger said.

Travel a little further out of Ithaca — the drive takes some time, but the destination is worthwhile — and you will find one last little bookstore to fall in love with: Dragan’s Book Barn of Finger Lakes. Once you enter the building, you may be lucky enough to catch sight of Tybee, the barn’s striped orange tabby cat.

Like all of these bookstores, A Book Barn of Finger Lakes has a rich history. Owner Vladimir Dragan ’85 said that the barn was originally a dairy barn, and in its last years during the 1960s and 70s it was a horse barn. It may be the earliest structural frame still standing in Tompkins County, dating to around 1805-1810.

“Ever since 1890 farming has been a decreasing occupation in the United Sates, and the tragedy is that unless we find an adaptive use for all these farms they’re going to disappear. Barns have to have a function like any building, and we have to adaptively reuse these barns – this is my textbook to show the public that there are other functions for the barns besides agricultural,” said Dragan, who majored in architecture, with a specialty in adaptive reuse and rebuilding.

“That was growing during the American Revolution,” said Dragan, as he proudly patted a beam. He also pointed out several other features of the building, such as hand hewn timbers where one can see the axe marks, as well as evidence of the first mill in Dryden, a time period when the expansions to the barn show evidence of sawing. Dragan had to renovate the barn extensively when he got it, but kept the structural frame as well as made some innovative adaptations, such as installing forced hot water that runs in pipes through what was once the manure gutter but now serves as a heating duct.

Dragan opened the bookstore on March 20, 1993, a week after the largest blizzard Ithaca had seen in 25 years. He has been in business for 39 years now — previously he was based in the Commons and was open by appointment only. He says that his customer base mostly consists of tourists – he’s had customers from most of the European nations, as well as Australia, amongst others.

And this brings us to the end of our tour: Take a few hours one weekend and explore one (or more) of these stores. All of the friendly owners had differing opinions on the presence of the big box stores and the prevalence of internet book buying, but many agreed that the one thing they do is take money away from the community.

All agreed, however, that there is a certain charm to entering a bookstore and serendipitously finding books that call out to you, a feeling that is hard to put into words. In this spirit, the Friends of the Library Book Sale started last weekend and will continue for the following two weekends. A biannual event as exciting as the Apple Harvest Festival, the book sale benefits organizations working for literacy in Tompkins County, and there are usually greater than 250,000 items for sale, including books, audio books, CDs, DVDs, records, puzzles, and games.