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“The perception of Baker as a dusty corner of the book business stuck to us for years,” according to Dwight. It was good business to continue working in that area as we established ourselves in the new markets of the late 1990s and the new millennium. Despite the acquisition of a number of imprints that propelled Baker Book House deep into the popular Christian market, its emphasis on academic books remained strong. In 1925, Herman Baker was fourteen years old when he and his family emigrated from the Zoutkamp area in the northern region of the Netherlands to Grand Rapids, Michigan. They quickly made a home in the Dutch community that had grown steadily in Grand Rapids and West Michigan since 1847, when the first immigrants arrived. The Reformed faith of the immigrants was preached in the churches and fiercely defended and openly discussed in the workplaces and homes of a people who often read theology in their free time.
Little French Bakery
In late 1978 the company established an outlet store in Grand Village Mall in the Grand Rapids suburb of Grandville. One of the store’s most popular virtual author events was a conversation between Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne, and Beth Allison Barr, author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood. More than 750 people attended, and nearly 2,000 watched it afterward on the store’s social media platforms. Broader service to the Christian publishing and retail community remains part of the Baker ethos. It began with Herman Baker playing a key role in the start of CBA and ECPA and continued with Rich Baker’s role on the boards of CBA and ECPA. Dwight Baker is part of the ECPA executive committee today, and Sue Smith, store manager of Baker Book House, is chairperson of the CBA board of directors.
Incredible Pastry Destinations and Bakeries in Los Angeles
Herman Baker was a constant presence at Baker Book House from the beginning in 1939 until his retirement in 1987. He took an active role in running the business and as a caretaker of the evangelical, Reformed tradition. In fact, after his retirement he continued coming to work every day except for the several weeks he and his wife, Angeline, spent in Florida each year. The transition to allowing employees more than one pen at a time took a bit longer.
Our Six Divisions
Our bookstore in stock books information are not available through our website. We recommend you either contacting the store via phone (fastest option) or sending a message via the Contact form. Baker Book House also offers our customers access to 90,000+ used books in the largest used Christian book department in the United States. Our staff carefully curates the selection as they buy used books from readers like you, as well as whole libraries from retiring ministers, professors, and scholars. Serious readers nationwide make their way to us to get lost in the stacks of rich readership.
Baker Book House Company Names Next CEO
There are additional accessible parking spaces located on the Upper Road. We definitely love vintage paperbacks, which we set out in wine crates like records so people can flip through them, cover to cover. I think we’re looking for all the different ways the human experience is interpreted and expressed, and we look to provide a wide variety of ways people communicate those experiences in print. This pandemic bakery first opened at celebrity chef Curtis Stone’s Beverly Hills restaurant Maude in lieu of the Michelin-star restaurant’s tasting menu. Stone is also opening Pie Room at the buzzy Topanga Social at Westfield Topanga in Canoga Park.
Our community has found a meeting place replete with a private community room, free Wi-Fi, a café, event space, and comfortable seating. Baker Book House is a must visit for any book lovers of quality Christian books. On the retail side of the company, all stores except the Kentwood location eventually closed. Then in 1996, Baker Book House experienced a devastating loss when Peter Baker, vice president of retail sales, passed away from leukemia. He was fifty-two years old and left behind his wife, Carol, and four children. Peter was Herman Baker’s second son and a visionary in book retailing, one of the first to open a bookstore, Pooh’s Corner, devoted exclusively to children’s books.
In 1925, when the family made its way again to Ellis Island and then by train to Grand Rapids, Michigan, they were here to stay. The Bakker family dropped the second “k” from its name when Ricco became a United States citizen a number of years later. This year, in celebration of our seventy-five years of fidelity to this mission, we welcome our companions to explore a history of the kingdom activities of Baker Book House Company. To borrow a line from our founder, Herman Baker, this is the best business to be in. All staff and volunteers are required to comply with the City of Los Angeles’ vaccination requirements for municipal employees, and stay at home if they are experiencing any COVID-19 symptoms. The greatest memory of the Witch’s House is that’s where all the kids would convene on Halloween, so sometimes they’d get 3,000 to 5,000 kids in front of the Witch’s House, looking for candy and some of them looking for mischief.
Baker Publishing Group
It’s proud of a culture of austerity inspired by its founder’s frugal business practices, which once included providing each employee with only one pen at a time. The 1980s and 1990s were years of growth, success, and vision for Baker Book House. The emphasis on academic books continues today with series such as The Church and Postmodern Culture, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament, and Engaging Culture.
The Week(s) in Books
At age twenty-eight, with help from his in-laws, Herman Baker opened his bookstore at 1019 Wealthy Street in Grand Rapids. The year was 1939—the Great Depression was nearing its end and German troops invaded Poland in the opening salvos of World War II. Herman paid just eighteen dollars a month to rent the bookstore space, which he filled with homemade shelves that displayed almost five hundred used books he had collected over the years.
It’s a great book for transplants and native Angelenos to better understand Los Angeles through its history, its artists and its authors. For this week’s bookseller conversation, I spoke to past festivalgoers Jenny Yang and Chris Capizzi, owners of Filipinotown’s new A Good Used Book shop. An exclusive look at what we’re reading, book club events and our latest author interviews.
Grand Rapids' Baker Book House gets new retail store, has jobs to fill - Rapid Growth
Grand Rapids' Baker Book House gets new retail store, has jobs to fill.
Posted: Thu, 29 Mar 2012 07:00:00 GMT [source]
“The Great War sent many young American soldiers to Europe for the first time, and many came back charmed by the romantic architecture of rural France and Germany,” Gellner says. Popular Inglewood bakery Sweet Red Peach turns out some of the finest homestyle cakes and sweets in Los Angeles. There are classics like red velvet cake and carrot cake, but also glorious banana custard cups and birthday cake-style slices. Classic Jewish bakery Diamond has been serving the Fairfax District neighborhood for something like 75 years. Making everything from honey cake and babka to colorful rugelach, it’s a fantastic place to load up on affordable baked goods for the family. Baker Book House Company’s board of directors announced today that Jesse Myers will become the chief executive officer (CEO) on May 1, 2023, following Dwight Baker’sretirement, which was announced last June.
Disney became a lifelong patron of Tam O’Shanter and included many stylized storybook structures in his films and parks. Popular Eastside bakery Bub & Grandma’s has a tight menu of croissants, donuts, and American-style diner sweets like chocolate cream pie at its Glassell Park restaurant. Expect flavors to hew toward classic and balanced versus overly sweet. Classic German-influenced bakery Röckenwagner continues to make some of the city’s top European-style pastries and desserts at their Culver City location, as well as at farmers markets around town.
Perhaps the biggest move during the 1960s was construction of a twenty-five-thousand-square-foot facility in Ada, just east of Grand Rapids, to house the publishing division and warehouse. The building has been expanded three times since then, adding space to the mailing and warehousing departments as well as publishing-division offices. Today, executive v-p Sue Smith, assisted by a five-member management team, oversees the company’s retail operations and its 45 employees, 24 of whom are full-time; Smith reports to company CEO Dwight Baker. Store carries 140,000 new, used, and bargain books, and Baker Publishing Group publishes approximately 300 titles annually—all of which are available at the store. The company also banded together to support employees in times of personal crisis. One of these took place in 2009 when the wife of human resources director Dan Baker, youngest son of Richard Baker, was critically injured in a car accident and later died, leaving two children behind.
His first venture into reaching this vast market came in 1971 in the form of Ron Hembree’s Fruit of the Spirit, with a first printing of twenty-five thousand copies. By Baker’s fortieth anniversary in 1979, books that reached the general, or trade, market—not pastoral or scholarly works—composed about 60 percent of the Baker list. However, the 1979 catalog of academic books listed over 460 titles on subjects such as biblical studies, theology, apologetics, philosophy, missions, and hymnology.
