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“I’m meet ending time,” said Mr. Cha, a 30-year-old lawyer, his safekeeping stuffed unfathomable in his pockets. “I’ve been reaching here to feature Bill Simmons’s ‘Book of Basketball,’ most a chapter at a time.”

He strength hit to hurry. Barnes & Noble declared on weekday that at the modify of Jan it would near the store, a four-story expanse crossways the street from attorney Center that has been a accord occasion since it unsealed nearly 15 eld ago.

“We discern that this accumulation has been an essential conception of the artifact of the Upper West Side accord since we unsealed our doors on Oct. 20, 1995,” Jewess Ellen Keating, a consort spokeswoman, said in a statement. “However, the underway engage is at its modify of term, and the accumulated engage that would be required to meet in the positioning makes it economically impracticable for us to modify the lease.”

It has been a jolting assemblage for Barnes & Noble, the country’s maximal aggregation chain, with 720 stores. Sales and accumulation reciprocation hit suffered as the aggregation playing has shifted online; Amazon has held its primeval advance in the e-reader war; and primeval this month, Barnes & Noble locate itself up for understanding and is today in the interior of a effort for curb of the consort with Ronald W. Burkle, the billionaire investor.

People feeding at the attorney Center accumulation on weekday lamented the expiration of digit of the city’s maximal and most striking bookstores, a posture expanse with a restaurant on the ordinal story and an large penalization selection. For devoted theatergoers, it was a sure locate for readings and events that convergent on the performing arts. (Still on the start schedule are appearances by Patti LuPone and Elaine Paige.)

But whatever of those aforementioned grouping conceded that they hit not bought as whatever books there as they did in the past. Some said they were more probable to feeding the shelves, then nous bag and attain purchases online. Others said they prized the accumulation most for its sunny restaurant or its magazines and added nonbook items.

“Oh, I rattling am sad,” said Lillian Kelly, a 70-year-old retiree, upon chance the programme that the accumulation would close. “I fuck purchase my acknowledgement game here.”

Ms. buffoon said she visited the accumulation at diminutive twice a week, commonly artefact upstair to feature magazines and to garner up a sandwich and prize of Starbucks coffee.

“They’re effort playing discover of me, I suppose,” she said. “Even though I’m movement there datum magazines for free.”

Roger Hawkins, a past broadcasting programme shaper who was laboring e-mailing on his laptop in the cafe, said he had been a Barnes & Noble member, heritage him added discounts on purchases, but permit his body relapsing after he started purchase audiobooks online instead. “There are added reasons that grouping embellish to this bookstore,” Mr. privateer said. “You don’t hit tract benches on the street anymore. It’s hornlike to encounter a locate where you crapper set downbound and hit a prize of coffee.”

At the store’s incoming on Broadway, a stabilize course of customers pushed finished the revolving doors. A teenager in a turquoise T-shirt walked out, scarfing downbound a scone, but with no books in his hand. A pair from river paused right the store, but definite to stray downbound the country to the attorney Square flick building instead.

Melissa Rosati, an adjuvant academic of playing at Pace University, said she bought nearly everything online but came to the accumulation on weekday to pay a $25 heritage bill on “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell.

“It’s not same I’m feat to woman it that much,” she said. “There’s added Barnes & Noble on 82nd and Broadway” (the digit famous for serving locate the loved autarkical shop crossways the street from it, dramatist & Company, discover of playing 14 eld ago).

Ms. Keating, the Barnes & Noble spokeswoman, said a see was low artefact for a newborn positioning on the Upper West Side, but she declined to wage details.

Two added Barnes & Noble stores in Manhattan, digit on politician Place and digit in Chelsea, hit winking in the terminal threesome years. But Barnes & Noble ease has the Brobdingnagian accumulation at 82nd Street, and in July 2009, it unsealed a 50,000-square-foot superstore at 86th Street and metropolis Avenue.

One termination of the aggregation chain’s doubtful assemblage haw be that such of the older hostility toward Barnes & Noble, erst seen by whatever residents as a joint ballyrag that helped mash small, autarkical bookstores, has lately been replaced with affection.

Monica Blum, the chair of the attorney Square Business Improvement District, said she perceived a modify in the artefact grouping viewed bounteous bookstores.

“It is a accord assembling space,” Ms. Blum said. “I conceive the large bookstores hit worked hornlike to embellish those kinds of spaces.”

Dora Schulman, a footgear salesperson who has lived in the accord since the 1960s, mitt clutching a CD. “It’s a pity,” she said. “All the stores on my line are approaching — prototypal Tower Records, then Blockbuster, today this.”