Great Northwest Bookstore Destroyed by Fire

The Great Northwest Bookstore, a primarily online used bookseller located in historic Lair Hill, was destroyed by fire yesterday.  The Oregonian has the report:

A bookseller mourned the loss of his livelihood and more than 100,000 books as firefighters continued extinguishing a three-alarm fire that engulfed the Great Northwest Bookstore on Sunday.

In a home in the historical Lair Hill neighborhood where the 120-year-old building is located, friends and family of the store’s owner, Phil Wikelund, gathered to console the bookseller.

“It was my whole life, in terms of what I was doing,” said Wikelund, who opened his first used bookstore in 1973 in downtown Portland.

If that wasn’t unfortunate enough, Wikelund had recently “stopped insurance payments on the building because of money problems,” and several friends had stored items in the store’s basement including “sculptures…family kimonos, [and a] crystal collection.”

If there is any silver lining, it may be that the store had recently donated several books to the Oregon Poetry Collection.  But overall, just an extremely unfortunate set of circumstances…

Image credit Great Northwest Bookstore.