Northside Book Warehouse

Northside Book Warehouse is the kind of place where you go in looking for one book and emerge three hours later with a bag full of titles you never knew you wanted. The converted warehouse space houses over fifty thousand used volumes, loosely organized by subject but inviting the kind of wandering exploration that makes used-book hunting so addictive. The mystery and science fiction sections are particularly deep, with vintage paperbacks from the golden age of genre publishing that collectors covet. History books fill several aisles, from ancient civilizations to Pittsburgh's own storied past. The owner, who has been buying collections and estate libraries for nearly four decades, has an encyclopedic knowledge of his inventory and can locate almost anything on request. Cash-only and charmingly resistant to modernization, this is a bookstore for purists.