CTConnecticut field entry
The Book Barn
Niantic, CT
A 350,000-plus-book Niantic labyrinth spread through barns, sheds, gardens, a building called Hades, a possibly haunted book house, an outhouse full of books, roaming cats, and a pen of carrot-loving goats.
The Book Barn turns used-book shopping into an outdoor campus adventure, spreading hundreds of thousands of books through themed buildings, gardens, sheds, an old outhouse, animal areas, and three nearby Niantic stores.
Field notes
Why it belongs
Used bookstore, rare-book hunt, garden retreat, goat stop, cat hangout, haunted-building story, outdoor maze, themed-book campus, and roadside destination.
The merchandise is mostly books, but the physical experience is so far beyond a conventional bookstore that it clears the OddStops experiential exception without pretending otherwise.
The Book Barn began in Niantic in 1988 with a few shelves and hundreds of books and has expanded into one of Connecticut's most unusual book-shopping destinations. The Main Barn at 41 West Main Street anchors a property where books spill into multiple themed buildings and outdoor areas with names like Hades, The Haunted and The Last Page. Gardens, bookstore cats, goats, a book-filled former outhouse, outdoor browsing and hundreds of thousands of used and rare titles turn the visit into a wandering expedition. Two additional Book Barn shops sit nearby in Niantic, but the Main Barn remains the physical destination represented by this OddStops profile.
Store contents
What you will find
Directory categories
Known for
- More than 350,000 used and rare books
- Main Barn campus
- Hades
- The Haunted
- Gardens
- Goats
- Bookstore cats
- Outdoor browsing
- The Last Page
- Book-filled outhouse
- Three Niantic shops
- Long-running 1988 history
Plan another detour