If you need a biography of Italian architect Gio Ponti, a study of ancient marble facades, or an illustrated history of one of the revered Franks (Lloyd Wright or Gehry), you’ll find it at William Stout Architectural Books in San Francisco.
The store at 804 Montgomery St. hasn’t changed much since William Stout created the initial design for the space in the 1980s. Stout owns his eponymous bookstore, specializing in architecture, art, l planning and several areas of design, for 48 years and has imbued the space with its own aesthetic.
Although there have been “several iterations” of the first floor and basement levels – including a stint in which he and his wife, architect Paulett Taggart, lived in the bright ground floor space – floor – the white shelves and blond wood fixtures remained its elegant base.
“I always considered it a bit messy, but that’s my attitude towards the bookstore,” said Stout, 81. “It’s never really all together.”
Stout opened the store in 1974 with fellow architect Stephen Holl, in an apartment in famed San Francisco lawyer Melvin Belli’s home on Telegraph Hill. The firm’s specialty in design and architecture found success within the large professional community in the area, and in 1978 was able to move to a suitable retail location on Osgoode Place in North Beach. Eventually, through its popular catalog, the store gained an audience beyond the professional architectural community, especially as it expanded into other aesthetic subjects.
Now, after five decades, the bookstore has been acquired by the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity, who are committed to keeping what long-time customers love about the store intact. The new nonprofit, named for Mid-Century Modern industrial designers Charles and Ray Eames, has retained the store’s four employees and plans to stay in the 1850s building it has lived in since 1984.
The Eames Institute of Petaluma acquired the bookstore in October in a deal that included small specialty publishing house William Stout Publishers and the store’s inventory of more than 70,000 titles.
Eames was founded in the spring of 2022 by Llisa Demetrios, the Eames’ granddaughter, with a mission to promote interest in architecture, design and the Eames heritage. The institute, headquartered on a ranch owned by Demetrios, is funded by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, a longtime client of William Stout who called the store “a true testament to the ‘significance of design’. The store is among the institute’s earliest projects as the Eames Ranch is undergoing renovations.
“For us, it was a natural fit in terms of this idea of preserving something that was worth preserving so that future generations could benefit from it,” said Sam Grawe, director of brand and marketing. at the Eames Institute. “By preserving something like a retail store, you’re not preserving it in the sense of a museum. You preserve it more as a service.
Jackson Square’s historic brick buildings housed architecture and design firms when Stout first moved in. It was eventually joined by design publication Dwell magazine in the 2000s. Fashion designer Thom Browne’s boutique and Wendi Norris gallery are among the newer neighbors, alongside longtime Apple product designer Jony Ive , whose creative collective LoveFrom recently acquired a space across the street.
Ive — the designer of the iPod, iPad and iPhone — is a fan of the bookstore and recently mentioned it in a Financial Times story in the Jackson Square area.
As you browse Stout’s shelves, you’ll discover everything from multi-volume box sets about American painter Cy Twombly to the hyperlocal “A Store to Remember,” about now-defunct retailer I. Magnin and his famous Timothy-designed building. Pflueger in Union Square. Design movements from Bauhaus and Brutalism to Eco-design and Mid-Century Modern are also widely represented.
Oakland resident Kent German has been a customer since the 1990s. The former Cnet News editor said it was one of the few places he could easily find books about his niche interests in the design of transportation hubs and other government buildings.
“It takes a little digging, but that’s part of the fun of going there,” German said, noting that he found books on parliamentary building styles and airport architecture.
Grawe, who made his first purchases from the store while serving as editor at Dwell, said he viewed Stout Architectural Books as sharing the Eames Institute’s belief in “carrying forward this mission of problem-solving design problems and inspire the next generation of problem solvers.
Stout, known to friends and customers as Bill, became a consultant for the store that will continue to bear his name. Key to this transition was Erik Heywood, director of retail and brand development at the Eames Institute.
“I’ve shopped and known the store since I moved here 14 years ago,” Heywood said. “It’s good to have an idea of what it is and to know how to continue this in the future.”
Those who are aware of the management change have been positive, Stout said, in part because of the credibility of the Eames name in the design world.
“They’ve done a good job of keeping the bookstore looking the same and trying to maintain the integrity of the bookstore,” Stout said. “And when you think of one of the greatest industrial designers in the world who was in California, you think of Eames.”
The store itself became something of a landmark on Montgomery Street as other design-focused businesses came and went.
“In the United States, there are really only three bookstores dedicated to architecture, and they’re all on the West Coast,” Heywood said, noting Peter Miller Books in Seattle and Hennessey + Ingalls in Los Angeles.
With William Stout Architectural Books, the only location in Northern California, “people come here from all over the world.”
Eventually, the Eames Institute hopes to expand the store’s programming to include talks and author presentations, but Heywood said more immediate plans include revamping the store’s website to make its vast collection of rare and out-of-print books more easily searchable.
“When I moved to Jackson Square, my studio was around the corner from the store,” said metalwork artist Jeanine Payer, who had her own jewelry business in San Francisco for 25 years before moving to Atlanta. “Some of my most unusual books have come from there, on subjects like typography, Italian architecture, Japanese carpentry, Moroccan textiles – you run into things you don’t know, it will be fascinating.”
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