The Lit. Bar
The Lit. Bar is an independent book store in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx in New York City, U.S. The store is owned by Bronx native Noëlle Santos, who opened it after being alarmed when she read in 2014 that a Barnes & Noble near Co-op City was going to close: while Manhattan had 90 book stores, the Barnes & Noble branch was the only book store in the Bronx. Santos, who describes herself as "a black Latina female from the community", grew up in the Soundview section of the Bronx. She earned a bachelor's of business/accounting in 2009 and a master’s in human resources management in 2012, both from Lehman College.
Prior to opening her store, Santos had been a business major, but had no experience selling books. In 2019, shortly before the store opened, she told The New York Times, "I had never been inside an independent book store before I decided to open one." In 2015, Santos took an "Owning a Bookstore" course, registered the Lit. Bar brand, and then began to work in local book shops, volunteering her time in return for practical experience running a business. She entered the 2016 New York StartUp! Business Plan Competition, winning second place and using the $7,500 prize money to fund a pop-up book shop at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. At the end of 2016, Santos started a highly successful crowdsourcing campaign on Indiegogo called "Let's Bring a Goddamn Bookstore to the Bronx". The campaign, which featured a video with Santos performing a rap poem she had written, exceeded the $100,000 goal, raising what was variously cited as $170,000 or $200,000.
The store opened on April 27, 2019, with an opening ceremony attended by Bronx Borough President Reuben Diaz, who recited some lines from Santos's poem:
The date was significant for being Independent Bookstore Day, a celebration of the independent bookstores sponsored by the American Booksellers Association on the last Saturday in April.
The store is a combination book store and wine bar; the latter offering higher profit margins to offset the financial risks inherent in the independent book industry. In 2025, The New York Times said it "may be the most widely known example of the book-bar hybrid". Santos chose the South Bronx as her location to take advantage of the ongoing gentrification of the area, although also recognizing that rising rents due to gentrification are one of the problems facing independent book stores. In a 2019 interview, Santos said that gentrification was a "national epidemic" and admitted that while the Lit. Bar is encouraging it, gentrification of the South Bronx was happening before the Lit. Bar. Santos envisions the store as a place where new residents attracted by the gentrification can interact with the existing South Bronx population. The store features black feminist and local Bronx authors.