NEW YORK, Jan 2: America’s most famous French bookstore will close its doors this year after 73 years in business, unable to bear a staggering rent increase in New York’s Rockefeller Centre.

Outside the Librairie de France, hordes of tourists take pictures of the Centre, its ice-skating rink and tree, but inside one of the first retail tenants, the shelves are slowly emptied of books.

The reason for closing this venerable institution located at one of America’s most cherished retail addresses is a simple, albeit familiar one: the rent, which is due in September, is rising, from $360,000 to a million dollars per year.

Online book sales at bargain prices and declining interest in foreign-language books have also affected the landmark Fifth Avenue business.

And in another sign of the times, most shoppers these days come to the area in search of clothes, cosmetics or electronics.

“Of course, we sell for $20 a book that costs five euros (seven dollars) in Paris, but there are also shipping fees for online orders,” says Emmanuel Molho, who manages the family-run bookstore with his two children.

“No, what changed is the whole bookstore culture and the Rockefeller Centre has become no more than just a commercial centre.”

Molho’s father, Isaac, immigrated to the United States in 1928 after he attended a French school in Athens and met officials from major French publishing house Hachette in Paris.—AFP