FAIRHOPE, Ala. — Author W.E.B. Griffin once joked that Fairhope needed a welcome sign reading “Welcome to Fairhope, Where We Have More Writers Than Readers.” In a town like that, being the de facto headquarters for local authors means something — especially after 60 years.
Page & Palette is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year as the oldest independent, continuously family-owned general bookstore in the South. It has been in owner Karin Wilson’s family for 53 of those years, and she intends for her daughters to take it over when the time comes.
“Being able to grow in a town that has always catered to those things, to me, that’s why we’re still here,” Wilson said.
A City Founded on a Book
The connection between the store and the town runs deeper than coincidence. Fairhope was founded on the idea contained in a book: Progress and Poverty by economist Henry George, whose philosophy — known as Georgism — inspired the people who created the Fairhope Single Tax Colony.
George’s central argument was that land value, which increases through the growth of a community rather than through anything a landowner does, should be captured for public benefit through taxation on land rather than on labor or improvements. The colonists who came to the eastern shore of Mobile Bay in 1894 set out to build a place organized around that principle.
The Single Tax Colony still exists in Fairhope, holding land under long-term leases rather than selling it outright — an arrangement more than a century old and unusual anywhere in the United States.
The city has drawn writers ever since. Upton Sinclair and Winston Groom are among the many authors who have spent time there.
From Art Supplies to Books
Page & Palette opened in 1966 on Fairhope Avenue as an art supply store. It came into the family in 1973, when Wilson’s grandmother, Betty Joe Wolff, began running it.
The store has moved three times, including when Wolff bought the building it occupies today at 32 S. Section St., which at the time was a department store.
Wilson spent her childhood in the business along with her twin sister, Kelley Wolff Lyons. During those years her father, Robbie Wolff, entered the family business as well, opening Wolff Gallery in 1978 in what is now Latte Da, the coffee shop connected to the bookstore on the corner. He operated a frame shop upstairs.
The gallery was later sold to Lyons, who renamed it Lyons Share Custom Framing and Gallery and eventually moved it into a new building next door.
In 1997, Wilson and her husband, Kiefer Wilson, purchased Page & Palette from her grandmother.
What Independence Buys
Wilson said the principal advantage of remaining independent is speed.
“We don’t have to have a lot of things happen before,” Wilson said. “For instance, when the big book stores suddenly have to close 50 stores, we’re way ahead of that. Yes, we have gone through hard times, but we are able to immediately address those because we’re small and more in tune with all the details and intricacies of the business.”
That observation carries weight given what the past three decades have done to bookselling. The chain superstore expansion of the 1990s was widely expected to eliminate independent bookstores. Then online retail was expected to eliminate the chains. Then e-books were expected to eliminate physical books entirely.
What actually happened was more complicated. The chains contracted sharply. Independent bookstores, after severe losses, stabilized and in many markets grew — because the things that survived the disruption were the things a website cannot replicate: curation by people who know their community, physical space where people gather, author events, and the experience of finding a book you were not looking for.
Wilson identified the second advantage as the relationship itself.
“My husband, my daughters, Tyler and Tanner, and myself, most people know us and they know that we’re attached to this business,” said Wilson, who also served a term as Fairhope mayor from 2016 to 2020. “It’s just more personal, and that’s one of the reasons why we have such a strong tie to the community is because of that.”
Latte Da and The Book Cellar
The store has expanded well beyond books since Betty Joe Wolff’s day.
Latte Da opened in 1999. Wilson said the menu has barely changed — hot and cold coffee along with baked goods — and the cafe has always used beans from Carpe Diem Coffee & Tea Co. in Mobile. Page & Palette was Carpe Diem’s original wholesale customer.
The Book Cellar, housed inside the bookstore, functions as both event space and bar, offering beer, wine and cocktails. It hosts hundreds of events a year, from live music to author talks.
That combination — retail, cafe, bar, venue — is now common among successful independent bookstores, and it exists for a reason. Book retail alone operates on margins that are difficult to sustain against rent. Coffee, alcohol and events carry better margins and, more importantly, give people a reason to be in the building for hours rather than minutes.
A Literary Walk for the Anniversary
To mark 60 years, Page & Palette is developing a literary walk around the building honoring notable authors who have lived in Fairhope and their contributions to the city’s literary history, spanning from 1874 to 2006.
It begins with Henry George’s Progress and Poverty — the ideas that led to Fairhope’s creation — and ends with Sonny Brewer’s The Poet of Tolstoy Park, about Henry Stuart and his Round House in Montrose.
The Round House is a real structure and a Fairhope landmark: a circular dwelling Stuart built by hand after being told he had a short time to live, and in which he then lived for decades. Brewer’s novel drew national attention to a piece of local history that had largely been a story told among neighbors.
Bracketing the walk between those two books frames the town’s literary history as a continuous line from the idea that founded it to the story that made it known.
What She Thought She Was Getting Into
Wilson said she had just had her daughter Tyler and was living in Colorado when she began thinking about buying the business from her grandmother in 1997. The appeal was making her own schedule and spending more time with her children.
She found out after taking ownership that this was not how it worked.
“It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of detail. There’s a lot of stress, but you have those short moments of pure bliss that make up for it all,” Wilson said. “It’s just those things that you’re like, ‘I failed 99 times and we had this small success, and it really was very rewarding.’ Those are the things you count on, and you deal with all the other stuff. Also having something that my kids are interested in that they can also find joy in and fulfillment, that’s the biggest for me.”
Sixty Years, Four Generations
The arithmetic of the store’s survival is worth stating plainly. A business that opened in 1966 has operated through the arrival of chain bookstores, online retail, e-readers, a global pandemic that closed retail entirely, and the general decline of downtown commercial districts across small-town America.
Downtown Fairhope did not decline. It became a destination, with the bookstore near its center — and the causation runs in both directions. A downtown with a bookstore, a coffee shop, a gallery and an event space is a downtown people walk through rather than drive past.
Four generations of one family have now been involved: Betty Joe Wolff, Robbie Wolff, Karin Wilson and Kelley Wolff Lyons, and Tyler and Tanner Wilson.
Page & Palette is located at 32 S. Section St. in downtown Fairhope.