Two very different volumes stood side by side recently at the 30-year-old Loganberry Books.

A dull green binding held a 1916 autobiography by Charles Francis Adams, Jr., historian, railroad official, and descendant of two presidents. A vivid magenta and orange one held a 2007 biography of New York Congresswoman “Battlin’” Bella Abzug, known for brash hats and opinions.

Loganberry is packed from its wooden floors to tin ceilings with some 110,000 tomes from many times, places and viewpoints. It also offers a wide range of knickknacks, such as maps, china, socks, and stuffed creatures called Jellycats.

“A well-organized bookstore is a bit of an art,” Loganberry owner Harriet Logan says of her Shaker Heights store on 13015 Larchmere Blvd. “It’s also personal. It’s quirky.”

Marking 30 years

Logan’s quirky Loganberry Books will celebrate its 30^th anniversary from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. this Saturday, Dec. 7, with live music, cake, Biblio Talks and book signings by local authors like Connie Shultz, Derf Backderf, and Marie Vibbert, and various activities.

Nowadays, many people buy books and read them online, but Loganberry is one of about 17 independent bookstores surviving in Cuyahoga, Summit, and Medina counties, along with a few chain outlets.

“Readers appreciate a deep browse in the physical stacks,” observes Logan. “Online, you have algorithms and paid advertising leading your way. In person, you have happenstance and association, tactual discovery, and understanding.”

People gather at Loganberry not just for goods but company. The store hosts many author talks and signings, story times, art shows, and meetings of groups like the Northern Ohio Bibliophilic Society, Political Dystopia Book Club, Queer Book Club, and Rebel Readers.

Before the pandemic, Loganberry also used to host an annual Edible Books Festival, when customers brought in tasty tomes and comestible characters.

A neighborhood staple

Loganberry BooksThe store’s name is Logan’s long-time nickname, inspired by the fruit. Her family moved a couple times before settling in Pepper Pike when she was nine years old. She graduated from Orange High School, Lehigh University, and the University of Illinois at Champaign, where she earned a master’s in theater history and worked in a bookstore.

In 1994, Loganberry Books opened in its first location on Larchmere, two blocks east of the current store. The street had long hosted independent, somewhat quirky retailers such as Sedlak Interiors, which occupied 14 buildings along the boulevard.

After Sedlak left for Solon in 1989, merchants declared Larchmere an antiques district. Loganberry fit right in, starting mostly with rare and used books. It shared Sedlak’s former headquarters with Dede Moore Oriental Rugs.

In 2003, Logan’s family bought the store’s current home, a 1926 warehouse that housed the former Nash Motors showroom.

The new location’s bookshelves of various woods were built in-place or hauled from other buildings, including the old Shaker Heights Main Library.

One of Loganberry’s five rooms, called the Sanctuary, holds special and rare books, along with a display of manual typewriters located near the ceiling. A separate book restoration and repair business, Strong Bindery, leases space in the building.

Outdoor, a side wall features a huge mural of a bookshelf, painted by Gene Epstein.

Logan’s mother, Brenda, helps run the store. The place is also a second home for Alice, a cat named for the girl who inspired Alice in Wonderland.

Bibliophile favorite

Among many honors over the decades, the popular website Mental Floss named Loganberry Ohio’s best bookstore last year. Customers echo the praise.

“I find things here that I don’t find other places,” says customer Jess Bruening.

Harriett Logan“I love the way it smells, and I love all the books: old books, new books,” raves customer Melissa Chapman.

Logan usually walks to work from her home in the CHALK neighborhood (named for the streets Cormere, Haddam, Ardoon, Larchmere, and Kemper, just north of Shaker Square).

She has created a native wildflower garden in her front yard to nurture butterflies.

Logan says that Larchmere has grown more eclectic during her decades in the neighborhood. Now it “represents the community and reality better.”

But Logan says she still senses unmet potential. “Larchmere has this odd and persistent characteristic of forever changing and forever feeling like it’s on the brink of something great,” she observes.

She also likes the view of the Terminal Tower one gets while at a typically quirky vantage point in Larchmere, explaining, “You have to stand in the middle of the street.”

Loganberry Books’ 30^th Anniversary Celebration runs from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 7. It is free and open to the public. Registration is appreciated.

This story also appears in the winter issue of The Connection, published by the Shaker Square Area Development Corporation.