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John William Stacey (d. 1943), a former book department employee of the Emporium Department Store and an amateur botanist, opened a 216-square-foot medical bookstore, J.W. Stacey, Incorporated, on the second floor of San Francisco's Flood Building in 1923, utilizing $20,000 of capital pooled from 47 CA physicians. It expanded from a beginning collection of 400 medical treatises lining 240 linear feet of shelf space to a full-spectrum bookstore stocking 120,000 titles by 2000. It became a fixture in the city, particularly for technical books--from medical to engineering--and also became an important book publisher. The company developed six branch stores in Palo Alto, Richmond, Cupertino, Modesto, San Bernardino and Los Angeles over the years. It moved from the Flood Building to a storefront at 551 Market Street in 04/1947; by c. 1958, it lost its lease here when the Standard Oil Company of CA bought the building and erected its new headquarters on the site. Stacey's moved nearby to 581 Market Street in 1959. Brodart Company, a library supply business founded in 1939, purchased the Stacey's chain in the 1970s. Inroads by digital reading media gradually eroded the clientele for new printed books, and Stacey's flagship store succumbed to the revenue losses on 03/17/2009.

PCAD id: 18310