Barbara Walters at a 2008 book signing in Trover Books (photo by Dan_DC)

A Capitol Hill institution, Trover Books, announced yesterday that it will be shutting its doors. Hill residents of the long-term and less permanent kind have long relied on the shop at 221 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, for political books, congressional directories, non-Washington newspapers, and candy and cigars. Joe and Anne Shuman founded their family store in 1958, passing the business on to their three sons. One of them, Andy Shuman, told DCist today that “business has been bad the last couple years and getting steadily worse,” a decline that accelerated “as the economy has fallen apart.” During a visit to the shop this morning, employees pointed to the postman who came in to deliver the mail: he also had some Amazon packages under his arm.

The brothers grew up with Trover, all went away to college, and all chose to come back, with great pride, to run the store their father built. Heartbroken that the venture was no longer able to support itself, they decided to close now, at a point where they think they can pay off some considerable debts and avoid having to declare bankruptcy. They already had to close the family’s nearby Trover Card Shop, after it was badly damaged in the 2007 Capitol Lounge fire. They did not own that building, which was then purchased by the Heritage Foundation, but the family does own the main Trover building, a prime location that they plan to lease out, as a way to cover some of their debts.

Used book stores will continue to have a presence on Capitol Hill, although Nicky Cymrot, wife of the owner of nearby Riverby Books (417 E. Capitol St. SE), said that the closing of Trover was “very sad.” As a resident of Capitol Hill since 1966, she wondered if another book store, perhaps hers, could take over one of the things that made Trover a special place, the many book signings the store hosted, often by high-profile political figures. Erica Gutman, another long-time Hill dweller and Tae Kwon Do instructor who came into Riverby by chance to trade some used books, offered another view of what made Trover such an important part of life on the Hill: “One year I bought all my Christmas presents at the Trover shops, just to save time.”