Costa Rica is losing one of its most historic bookstores. Librería Lehmann announced its permanent closure yesterday, bringing to an end 130 years of service to Costa Rican readers, students, writers, teachers, and families. The final day of operations will be Saturday, June 20.
The announcement came through a message published on the bookstore’s social media accounts and spread rapidly across the country, drawing an outpouring of grief and nostalgia from generations of Costa Ricans for whom Lehmann was not simply a place to buy books, but something closer to a civic institution.
The story began in 1896, when Antonio Lehmann Merz, a German immigrant who had arrived in Costa Rica through the encouragement of Bishop Bernardo Augusto Thiel, established a small operation on Calle 4 in downtown San José. He called it Librería Católica.
It opened with four employees selling religious books, rosaries, imported scientific texts, and stationery, while a small printing press in the back produced religious materials and posters for church events. The country was still young. Costa Rica had declared itself a republic 48 years earlier, and Central American independence was 75 years in the past.
By 1904, Lehmann had outgrown his original space and relocated to Avenida Central, taking over premises that had previously housed Librería e Imprenta Trejos. The renamed Librería Antonio Lehmann expanded its inventory to include general literature, school supplies, and professional reference materials, and quickly became a meeting point for prominent intellectuals and writers of the era. Many early works of Costa Rican literature passed through its doors and its printing presses.
Over the following century, the bookstore grew alongside the country itself, adding departments, branches, and a wider range of educational materials, art supplies, music, technology, and toys. It became the place Costa Rican families visited before the school year, where university students hunted for textbooks, and where generations of children had their first encounter with a book they chose for themselves.
Lehmann operated branches in San José and other parts of the Greater Metropolitan Area, including Pavas and San Pedro. In 2019, after more than a century in its best-known downtown building, the company moved its main entrance to a nearby space close to its historic Avenida Central location.
The closure announcement cited deep economic, technological, and social changes that altered reading habits, educational models, and the publishing market. Digital platforms, online retailers, and the decline of physical book purchasing across the region made the business increasingly difficult to sustain. External circumstances beyond the company’s control added to those pressures until the decision, described in the announcement as deeply difficult, became unavoidable.
The message in which Lehmann said goodbye was gracious. The company expressed gratitude to students, teachers, professionals, families, and readers who, over more than a century, found in its shelves the tools to transform their lives and contribute to the development of Costa Rica. It framed the closure not as a defeat, but as the natural completion of a cycle, noting that every institution has its chapter and leaves its mark.
As a final gesture toward the community it served, Lehmann announced discounts of up to 70 percent on remaining inventory during its last days. The company also confirmed that some of its final stock has been reserved for donation to cultural initiatives and organizations connected to reading and education.
The closure reflects a broader struggle for traditional bookstores facing digital disruption and changing consumer behavior. But in Costa Rica, where Lehmann’s name has been tied to books, school supplies, downtown San José, and family routines for 130 years, the loss carries a weight that sales numbers alone cannot capture.
As Librería Lehmann put it in its farewell, the doors of a bookstore may close, but literature, education, and culture remain part of the future of a nation.
