Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shops will open at the Windham Mall this summer. The original Sherman’s of Bar Harbor opened in 1886 as “W.H. Sherman, Printer & Stationer,” and is the oldest bookstore in Maine and one of the oldest in the country, according to its current owners. Contributed / Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shops
Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shops expects to have its new Windham store open in July.
The local bookstore chain announced last month that would open a store at the Windham Mall along with two other new stores in Topsham and Rockland.
The store will be located next to Renys.
Besides Bridgton Books, Bull Moose at the North Windham Shopping Center and couple of used bookstores throughout the area, book lovers don’t have any other shopping options in the Lakes Region.
“I think we’re intrigued by (Windham) being both a community as part of Portland, a year-round community but also a community in the Lakes Region there that we expect to see an uptick of visitors in the summer like we do on the coast,” Jeff Curtis, Sherman’s co-owner and CEO, said this week.
At the start of the pandemic, Curtis said, Sherman’s shut down its Camden location because “we went into survival mode, basically, and decided that if we were going to survive, we needed to close one of the stores so that we have more resources when we were allowed to reopen.”
What they found, Curtis said, was that as soon as they were able to open for in-person shopping, patrons “came out in droves” to support local businesses.
“By the end of the year, we actually were doing very well and wished that we had not closed the Camden store,” he said. “We didn’t need those resources, as it turned out.”
In a statement released on Independent Bookstore Day, Curtis said that “the resulting surge in business left us looking for new growth opportunities.”
William Sherman opened “W.H. Sherman, Printer & Stationer” 135 years ago in Bar Harbor. Curtis’s parents, Michael and Patricia Curtis, bought the shop from Sherman’s children in 1962 and expanded the business over the next three decades, according to the shop’s website.
Today, three generations of Curtises have been a part of Sherman’s bookstores, which was renamed to Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shops in 2016. The three new locations join existing locations in Bar Harbor, Boothbay Harbor, Damariscotta, Freeport and Portland.
The original Sherman’s of Bar Harbor on 56 Main St. is the oldest bookstore in Maine and one of the 10 oldest in the United States, according to the owners.
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