For every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here’s one of them: Pageant Print Shop.

It’s been nearly two decades since Michael Caine and Barbara Hershey perused the Pageant Book Shop for a copy of E. E. Cummings in “Hannah and her Sisters,” but the store’s history goes back farther than that. In 1946, Sidney B. Solomon and Henry “Chip” Chafetz joined the ranks of Book Row, a stretch of mom-and-pop bookshops along Fourth Avenue from St. Marks Place to 14th Street. One of Mr. Solomon’s two daughters, Shirley, took over after her father died and then moved the store to West Houston Street after a rent hike in the 1990s.

Pageant became an online-only enterprise in 1999, only to reopen at 69 East Fourth Street after Shirley’s sister Rebecca moved back to the city. Nearly seven years later, the siblings are still selling hard-to-find items, though now maps and prints rather than rare books. “Some are old, some are very old, some are very, very old,” said Shirley during a recent conversation with The Local.

How does a shop that sells old maps stay in business?

Shirley: I focus on the unique and affordable. I have things from $1 to $100, to $1,000. There’s an original David Roberts lithograph that is $3,000 framed. We get lots of foot traffic and sell a lot of things in the $1 to $4 range, which adds up.
Rebecca: Things on average cost $25. We really have the most affordable antique-prints shop in New York. We don’t deal as a high-end map or antique prints shop. Those are for uptown dealers. The clientele down here isn’t the same as on the Upper East Side.

What kinds of people come in?

Shirley: I get a lot of people writing books who need pictures to illustrate their books. I have endless requests for maps of the eastern end of Long Island, for Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. New York City maps are the most popular.

How do you get your hands on rare and interesting items?

Rebecca: That’s a trade secret. My sister’s stock answer is, “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” My stock answer is, “Wherever we can.” Sometimes we stumble on something in other stores. Some people bring us stuff that their parents bought from my father 40 years ago. We’re very good at finding stuff, but there is no one source. In our business, we can’t just order 40 maps of New York from 1880 because we want them.

Shirley: You’d be surprised how much stuff comes in just off the street, from people moving, from recently deceased relatives.

Do you both have a similar eye and taste?

Rebecca: We both know what interests people. Sometimes we look at each other and say, “We’ve got to have it.” We pretty much have the same taste. My sister takes the lead on things because she was the one who took over and really managed it on her own for a while. She’s also there much more on a daily basis than I am.

What was it like working for your father?

Rebecca: He was amazing. My father knew so much about everything and could talk about so many topics. He could speak on any subject and do it in more than one language. We had customers who would come from all over the world and he’d always know a smattering of every language.

East Fourth Street is a really interesting street to have a business on with the mixture of theaters, the co-op and various small niche businesses.

Rebecca: It’s a fabulous block to be on. With the help of the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association and the Fourth Arts Block there is a dedication to community development. They encourage women and minority businesses and development, and the rents are slightly below market, which helps.

How is your rent?

Rebecca: Our lease is six years now and the rent has just been going up five percent a year, which is doable. I don’t want to give the exact number.

How about your overheard costs?

Rebecca: We have a lot of overhead because we’re still building the business. Our acquisitions are high since we’re still in growth mode. It’s been a constant progression with just a little pause in 2008 like everyone experienced. One great thing recently was that ConEd came in and changed our light bulbs. I can’t believe how much money we’re saving now. We went from $125 a month to $35 a month.

Is there a map you would just die to get your hands on?

Shirley: There’s a Viele drainage plan for the city that’s at the Municipal Archives. That’s my dream map. Maybe one day someone will call me and say they have one for sale.

Rebecca: I love anything having to do with New York. I love the Tony Sarg prints of New York in the 1920s. The colors are great. The depictions are very comical and very true to life. Each picture tells a million stories. We have some Ernst Haeckel originals that are just incredible discoveries of art forms in nature.

Where do you see the business in the next five, ten years?

Rebecca: Hopefully where it is. The family business might end with us. There is only one kid between us and she’s a modern kid and right now not too interested. Maybe when she’s older, she’ll realize what a cool business this is. When she graduates college and can’t find a job in what she wants to do, then maybe she’ll change her mind.