Big Hill Books and the Case for a Walkable District

Big Hill Books, the general-interest bookstore Beth Thompson opened at 405 Penn Ave. S. in July 2023, has become a fixture of Bryn Mawr's small business district.

Thompson held the shop's grand opening July 15, 2023, in a multi-level building constructed as a chapel in 1915. The store carries an inclusive general-interest inventory plus toys, puzzles, gifts, greeting cards and home-and-garden goods, and its name nods to the neighborhood: Bryn Mawr is Welsh for "big hill".

The district around it is modest, a cluster of shops and restaurants rather than a commercial strip, and its appeal is that residents can reach a meal, groceries or a book on foot, with a coffee shop directly across the street. That kind of compact, walkable node is what urban planners have long argued for, and Bryn Mawr offers a concrete version of it: a few blocks where errands and chance encounters happen without anyone starting a car.

The store sits at the center of that node. Thompson stocks it as a general-interest shop rather than a specialty one, and the 1915 chapel's multiple levels give the books, toys and gifts room to spread out across a building that began its life as something else entirely.