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The Librairie Française at New York's Rockefeller Center will close in September (2009) after 73 years in midtown Manhattan, as the store's rent jumps from $360,000 (258,000 euros) to a million dollars (716,000 euros) a year. The bookstore opened in 1935 at the invitation of David Rockefeller, who wanted Europeans to be part of his new office building.
Bookstore owner Emmanuel Molho, says the family-owned business's difficulties are due not only to the rise of on-line buying but also to the changes at Rockefeller Center itself. With exclusive boutiques, selling clothes, cosmetics and electronics to tourists, "the Center has become a shopping mall," he told the AFP news agency.