Otto's - "a booklover's paradise" since 1841 Since 1958, Otto’s Bookstore in downtown Williamsport has been including in its ads and on its stationery the phrase “since 1877.”  But now there’s a question about those numbers.  It could be older.           “We knew our store was old,” said Betsy Rider, present owner, “but we had never put a date to its origin until the Sun Gazette editor, Paul Gilmore, wrote my father’s obituary in 1958.  In it, he said it was directly descended from the Insurance agency in Market Square where the owner, John M Dean, put window shades, wallpaper and books in his store windows in 1877.  Well, you know, everything you read in the newspaper has got to be accurate, so we never questioned the date.”           But various customers had brought old receipts and newspaper ads (one found under the linoleum they were removing from their kitchen) into the store and some of the dates were earlier than 1877.  So when her son Peter found himself with some extra time on his hands after his company moved to Florida, Rider asked him to see what he could find out from the city directories in the Brown Library.  He also scanned a number of archived daily papers for early stories or ads.           What Peter found was a succession of splits and mergers that date back to the 1841 establishment of A. D. Lundy and Co., at 24 East Third St., a business dedicated to the selling of window shades, wallpaper and books as well as insurance.  In 1867, the same A. D. Lundy seemed to expand to 26 and 28 East Third as he took in a partner, J. J. Ayers and called the business Ayers and Lundy, selling the same products.  Four years later an Alexander Dean joined the business, focusing primarily on the sale of insurance.  Two years later, in 1873, Alexander’s nephew, John M. Dean, joined in the bookselling side of the business.  The following year, in 1874, he moved his bookselling across the Square to 12 W. 3rd.  Ayers and Lundy continued to sell window shades, wallpaper, books and insurance and took on Hiester Otto in the insurance department.  In 1893 when John Dean moved his business to 232 West 4th St., he took Hiester with him.  At this point, Olive Dean, the widow of John’s uncle, Alexander, moved into the store John vacated at 12 W. 3rd and took on two partners, Horace Y. Otto (the man who sold the business to Rider’s father in 1934) and Newton C. Chatham).  They called their business “Otto, Chatham and Dean” and they sold books, stationery, wallpaper and window shades—a slight rearrangement of the lineup of products from the previous decade.  [In 1895 there were five businesses in downtown Williamsport selling the same unlikely combination of products and services!] In 1905 Jack Roesgen (Rider’s father) started working at 232 West 4th St., which was now called The Loan Bookshop and listed as its owners, in succession, Henry L. Otto and John B. Otto.  In 1916, John B. Otto, who was also a junior rodman for the Pennsylvania Railroad, City Engineer, civil engineer and surveyor, moved the bookstore back to Market Square (16 West 3rd) and appointed Roesgen manager.  Two years later Roesgen moved to Philadelphia to work at the George W. Jacobs Bookstore.  Six years after that, he returned to manage the H. Y. Otto Bookstore at 16 W. 3rd.  (Its ads no longer mentioned window shades.)  In 1928 Otto’s got its first phone number—5764—the same number it has today, with the prefix, 326.  1929 found the business at 26 W. 3rd and 1934 at 137 W. 4th.  In 1940, after Roesgen had bought the business, he moved it back to the location where he had first been introduced to bookselling—232 West 4th.  [An ice storm on moving day enabled them to slide the tables up the block.]   When Jack Roesgen died in 1958, his wife, Margaret, and daughter, Betsy, kept the business going.  Three years after putting a new face on the storefront, they lost their lease and moved to 25 West 4th   (a smaller store that didn’t have room for wallpaper).  In 1971, Margaret retired and Betsy’s husband, John Rider, left his job as librarian for the Lewisburg Federal Prison to manage “the store.”  Shortly after expanding to include 29 West 4th, they lost their lease again and moved to their present location at 107 West 4th. [“The Big Move” took place between the hours of 5 PM Saturday and 9 AM Monday.  Ten teams of six volunteers rolled all the stock and fixtures up the half block on merchandise carts—many borrowed from neighboring stores--and placed the books directly on the right shelves and tables.  All the volunteers took their “pay” in gift certificates!] In 1997 John retired and Betsy and two of her sons, Bill and Tom, tried to fill his shoes.  So does this mean “since 1877” is going to be replaced by “since 1841” and move Otto’s up in the longevity category from “one of the ten oldest bookstores in the country” to “one of the five oldest bookstores in the country?”  Betsy wants to get used to the idea first—give herself a little time, but she's inserted 1841 in all her brochures, cards and logos, and has researched the following article for the city’s Bicentennial celebration.
	Jack and his sister Mae pose in front of their workplace, "The H.L.Otto Bookstore" also known as "The Loan Bookshop" circa 1905.  In 1934 after "the store" had morphed into "The H.Y Otto Bookstore," Jack bought it.  Now 2nd, 3rd and 4th generations of Jack's family are still selling books under the banner, "Otto's, a Booklover's Paradise."

Our City's Forbears, What Were They Reading?

In 1841, the year of our earliest roots, when A. D. Lundy opened his store in Market Square, at 24 East 3rd St, several new publications would tempt the reading palate of local citizens and visitors just off the canal boats that traveled up from Harrisburg.  As they stretched their legs at the Market Street wharf, they might have walked the short distance to Lundy’s business to fetch the first edition, hot off the press, of The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper or Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue.  Could Charles Dickens, who toured this part of Pennsylvania by canal boat have dropped in to view his brand new book, Barnaby Rudge?            In 1867 when Lundy expanded to 26 and 28 East 3rd, he took in a partner, J.J. Ayers and changed the name to Ayers and Lundy.  The Ulman Opera House was constructed in the same “Square” that year and two years later, Mark Twain lectured there.  Did he cross the square to see his book The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Stories which had been published in 1867?           In 1873, when John M. Dean joined the firm, they were selling the new book by Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days and Ambrose Bierce’s Fiend’s Delight.  In 1874, when John Dean opened a separate store across the Square at 12 W. 3rd St., Peter Herdic was busy building homes, churches and a hotel a half mile away from the center of town and he invented a horse-drawn taxi called a Herdic cab to get him there.  If he could find the time, he might have bought and read the new book, Far from the Maddening Crowd by Thomas Hardy (one of the few novels by that author that has a happy ending).           In 1893, John Dean moved his business to 232 W. 4th St. and sold the wives of the millionaires Stephen Crane’s first novel Maggie: a Girl of the Streets and Oscar Wilde’s new play A Woman of No Importance.           In 1905 when 18 year old Jack Roesgen began his bookselling career as a clerk in what was now called The Loan Book Shop or The H. L. Otto Bookstore, still at 232 West 4th St., he would have sold G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy—a book and author for which he held a life-long appreciation.  For the lucky children he recommended the new Frances Hodgson Burnett novel, The Little Princess or the Jack London tale, White Fang.  In 1916, the owners moved the bookstore back to Market Square (16 W. 3rd) and appointed Roesgen manager.  His window displays would include the new books: Chicago Poems by Carl Sandberg, Mysterious Stranger, by Mark Twain, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, You Know Me by Ring Lardner and the spanking new philosophy in Albert Einstein’s book, Relativity.           In 1929, when the H. Y. Otto Bookstore was moved a few doors up to 26 W. 3rd, Roesgen was happy to recommend the new books including Chesterton’s Everlasting Man, Ernest Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Virginia Woolf’s Room of One’s Own and the very popular religious classic by Lloyd C. Douglas, The Magnificent Obsession.           In 1934, Roesgen bought the store which was now at 137 W. 4th Street, and he was selling Williamsport’s movers and shakers Call It Sleep by Henry Roth, Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara, Lust for Life by Irving Stone, Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie and Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald.           In 1940 Roesgen moved his store to 232 W. 4th St., the location where he was first introduced to bookselling 35 years before. Best sellers that year included Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers and Native Son by Richard Wright.  Two children’s books introduced that year have remained consistent best sellers for the next (could it be?) 66 years—Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hatches the Egg and Dorothy Kunhardt’s Pat the Bunny.           Our founding fathers and mothers don’t seem nearly as remote when you know you can read the same books they did.  Drop in any time and see (amazingly!) how many of these books are still in print.