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Penn Bookstore
Rating Details »
Category: Bookstores [Edit]
Neighborhood: University City3601 Walnut St
Philadelphia, PA 19104
(215) 898-7595
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Parking:
- Street
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
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Modern Eye
- 11 reviews
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"This place is just the best. Incredible selection of frames including Paul Frank, which has some great stuff at very reasonable prices…" read more »
10 reviews for Penn Bookstore
A large bookstore run by the Barnes & Noble, this is the place where on the first floor you find all your fiction and non-fiction, Penn paraphernalia (really expensive, but all over), children's books, magazines, newspapers, discount books, and some random B&N items. The back connects to the Penn Computer Connection.
Upstairs, seating on benches and comfortable chairs, books on games & cooking, calculators and dorm supplies, a branch of the UPSFCU, token machine, and lots of textbooks in a big section. Fairly efficient system to get textbooks and reference books upstairs.
Also a small coffeeshop with plenty of places for people to snack, eat outside food, and study at the desks and tables there.
A comfortable place to study and find what you need. All the basics without issues, for the most part. Clean bathrooms, too.
If you look around, you'll see the College House flags on the pillars, too, in the open area on the second floor that looks down on the first floor area.
Also where people pick up their graduation gowns and sell back their books at the end of the year.
I really like this bookstore. Lots of nice comfy couches and the cafe has some amazing soups and other latte drinks. The textbook section is upstairs, but a separate part of the store (where they make you leave all other purchases behind and you have to pay for the textbooks you want before leaving the section (not the store)), but generally it's not an issue.
The staff do not always know where things are, normal books or textbooks, but they try their best to be helpful, so I can appreciate that. Very expensive UPenn stamped shirts and mugs, etc, for the parents. I've spent many hours here just relaxing on the chairs/sofas, and have always appreciated that this store was accommodating to my actions.
Part of me really wants to hate Penn's Book Store, I mean it really really wants to hate it. It has Barnes & Noble written all over it and somehow Penn's students have to depend on it for the majority of their school book needs. I went through that kind of system over at Temple and it really didn't work so well, especially once I tried to return books when I was done with them.
But the Penn Book store is just so damned clean and inviting. All of the displays can be pretty enticing too. they really do know how to give you a lot of good things to look through! And for a Campus store that has corporate written all over it, it does have a very helpful staff. and the last I checked at least the majority of them were students.
So while I begrudgingly admit it, this store does offer a lot of good.... for now.
Meh.
It's a very, very nice Barnes and Noble, which basically means there are few things there that I'm interested in. We were there on a rainy Saturday afternoon, and the cafe was ridiculously crowded and slow. Thankfully we were able to find a table after a few minutes and sit while we sipped our drinks.
The place was clean and neat, and the bathrooms were also clean (this is a huge deal for me. HUGE.) There was also no line at checkout, which was very nice.
It's a place to be seen, definitely, although if you're looking for much out of the ordinary (at least in the religion section, which is my section of choice), I'd go elsewhere.
This is basically a really big and really nice Barnes & Noble with Penn sweatshirts, coursebooks and a few home items upstairs (ie blackout curtains, etc...) I've been to a lot of bookstores, and the only better one I've been to would be the giant UCLA complex back in LA.
It's a great place to kill time and study. I love Barnes & Noble in general so it's nice to see a college bookstore incorporated with it. The cafe is pretty big too (compared to the B&N Cafe at Rittenhouse, for example).
Well done store, and comfortable too! And best of all, if you have the B&N membership card, it works here too! No idea if that goes for Penn gear, though.
The Penn Bookstore (short for University of Pennsylvania Bookstore) is right next to the Inn at Penn Hotel - and has a back door into the book store right outside the front door of the hotel.
I stopped in here after dinner to grab some reading material for evening entertainment - having forgot to bring a book. Very nice and extensive selection of books, magazines, even office supplies. There is also a coffee shop upstairs which serves Starbucks coffee and espresso drinks.
If your university bookstore is going to be a Barnes & Noble, it might as well be this one! Very big, including nice selections of magazines, stationery, office supplies, and oh yeah, Penn stuff, along with the books. Decent-sized cafe upstairs.
To me, this has always been a Barnes & Noble in disguise (which it is). Textbooks never brought me here, but their extensive magazine rack and book selection did.
I also like it because they sell office supplies at a relatively cheap price... reams of paper, pens, notebooks, staplers, etc. have all been part of my purchases here. They also have a music selection. Around 2002, they had a great selection of harder-to-find CDs that even Tower wouldn't carry. Now, unfortunately, they have a lot of major label B.S. for two-three dollars more than you should pay.
The Penn Bookstore remains one of my favorite places to kill time.
Only after leaving Penn have I learned to really appreciate this bookstore. I thought all University bookstores would be as extensive, but no such luck. I am giving this bookstore 5 stars because of the extensive foreign language section. Every time I am in Philadelphia I stop buy to pick up a few novels in German. They don't just carry the novels that students are required to read for classes but they really have a good selection of literature in many languages. I'm at Stanford now and although I think they also have a good language program apparently students are only expected to read the language books they have been assigned. The same goes for Johns Hopkins. What's wrong with these schools, they have an international student body, you would think they would carry international literature. I am still loyal to Penn's bookstore.
This is definitely the spot for Penn gear, not that I ever buy any, & for housewares, not that I buy them from here.... If you're a student with someone else's credit card and without a ride to Ikea/Target, you can furnish your room with the bookstore's wares. It's a rather large property complete with a bookstore and some cozy reading nooks on the 2nd floor if you're lucky enough to grab one. No, the prices here aren't better than those at online retailers, but I don't think any physical bookstore can beat the online options on price. When you come to a university bookstore, you know what you're in for - the textbooks, the college gear, & stationary minus bargain basement pricing.
