Skip to Content

Rosenbach Company

The Rosenbach Company was established in 1903 at 1320 Walnut Street, Philadelphia by preeminent book collector and dealer A.S.W. (Abraham Simon Wolf) Rosenbach and his brother and business partner, Philip. The company had another store on 322 East 57th Street, New York, N.Y. The company sold rare books and manuscripts, antiques, and art objects. The company closed in the mid 1950s following the death of A.S.W. Rosenbach.

Abraham Rosenbach began collecting while a student at the University of Pennsylvania. He later used his passion for collecting to establish the Rosenbach Company. The company helped assemble collections in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California and the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC. The company provided private services to J.P. Morgan, Lessing Rosenwalk, and Harry Elkins Widener. Mr. Rosenbach died on July 1, 1952. The Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia which opened in 1954 to share the Rosenbach personal collection with the public. The Rosenbach Museum & Library joined with the Free Library of Philadelphia becoming the "The Rosenbach at the Free Library" on December 3, 2013.

References:

The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. Bookselling. https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/bookselling/. Accessed 7/17/2018.

A.S.W. Rosenbach. Wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._S._W._Rosenbach. Accessed 7/17/2018.

Rosenbach Museum and Library. Wikipedia article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenbach_Museum_and_Library. Accessed 7/17/2018.

Dumbarton Oaks Garden Archives, B:BF 1948.07.23, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, Rare Book Collection. Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C. https://www.doaks.org/library-archives/garden-archives/correspondence/letters-and-notes/beatrix-farrand-to-percy-e-lawler-july-23-1948/. Accessed 7/17/2018.

Rosenbach, A.S.W. (Abraham Simon Wolf), 1876-1952. The unpublishable memoirs. https://archive.org/details/unpublishablemem00roseiala. Accessed 7/17/2018.