City Lights Booksellers & Publishers

The three-story building at the corner of Columbus and Broadway is marked by the distinctive, narrow facade of City Lights Booksellers and Publishers. Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin founded the shop in nineteen fifty-three as the first all-paperback bookstore in the country. In nineteen fifty-six, Ferlinghetti published Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl. The subsequent obscenity trial thrust the store into a national battle over free speech. The judge eventually ruled the poem had redeeming social importance, securing a foundation for counterculture literature here.