The Bindery, a Bay View book-binding business, print shop, coworking and event space, announced this week on Facebook that it is closing. The business launched in 2018 and moved into its current space at 347 E. Ward St. in 2021.
On Saturday, July 19 from 11 a.m.-5 p.m., The Bindery will host “one big final liquidation sale,” according to the closure announcement. “Come say goodbye and buy our cool collection of vintage furniture, books, office items, remaining materials and store stock,” the announcement said. The sale will include discounts on notebooks, posters and paper goods, as well.
The Bindery was started by Zachary Lifton, who has a master’s in historic preservation. After he moved to Milwaukee in 2016 from Philadelphia, where he managed a co-working space, he bought the former Wisconsin Book Bindery building on Ward Street. “I had to convince [the owner] to turn down these million-dollar offers she was getting for the property and go with this ragtag new business that wasn’t going to just tear everything down,” Lifton told Milwaukee Magazine in 2021.
Lifton is moving to New York to serve as the executive director of Historic Ithaca, a nonprofit promoting historical preservation in the Finger Lakes Region of the state.
In the closure announcement, Lifton said The Bindery was closing due to “the state of the national economy over the past number of years, in combination with the timing of the pandemic, all smashed together with the economics of small arts-business ownership in the context of Milwaukee at large, and the present administration at the federal level.”
The Bindery’s building is now for sale. Many of the businesses’ items and classes will be moving to Anchor Press, Paper & Print (aka AP3) at 900 E. Keefe Ave. The Bindery’s lead bookbinder Daniel Ehn will continue his book repair practice “on a smaller scale,” while assistant bookbinder Michelle Van Patten will move her binding and marbling classes to AP3.
Milwaukee Zine Fest, which was run by Lifton and The Bindery for the past seven years, will continue “under emerging leadership from within [The Bindery’s] core zine team.”
“I believe The Bindery grew to be a well-known, beloved and necessary arts institution in Milwaukee,” Lifton wrote in the announcement. “The Bindery hand-crafted thousands of books, taught thousands of students, made thousands of prints, and hosted thousands of tours and events. … If our closure feels like a loss, now’s your time to make a new version of what we started here.”
