Soldato

at The Williams Center

Words by Jesse Carr

Soldato Books & Records, after opening its doors at the Franklin Place location in 2020, has relocated to the historic Williams Center building in the heart of Downtown Rutherford at 15 Sylvan Street. Both the Arts Center and the shop share a kindred design language and intertwined passions for the arts. One is a place to hear and discover live events and the other is a zone of exploration for customers to procure tangible pieces to enhance the experience at home. 

Now, with the shop housed in the Williams Center, a sense of cross-discovery is possible. A band playing ProgStock 2024 may have a first edition LP for sale in the upstairs shop or a viewer of a rare Studio Ghibli film in the theater can browse the shelves to buy a retrospective coffee table book covering the work of those same Japanese animators. The inverse is also true. Customers flipping through the custom-made wooden bins at Soldato can drift downstairs and see that a band who sampled the record they’re holding is playing on the main stage in the spring.

Soldato is inspired by travels to cities where the backbone of the culture is found on the shelves of its independent bookstores. The pulse of a city, whether Prague or Portland, is throbbing in these centers of knowledge. With a slew of new and used records, CDs, tapes and books, Soldato has curated an identity that its customers have grown to trust. The same ethos will be present in the new space, where crates and shelves hold music and books that offer new horizons of thinking. Special pieces from famous collectors like Bobbito Garcia are sprinkled throughout the shop, where the latest Murakami novel sits alongside independent zines and essay collections.

Live experiences have become a growing part of Soldato’s legacy in the community, and that will only expand with this larger venue. Painters, poets, musicians, and comic artists have nestled into the Franklin space, and now with an Arts Center right outside, expect a growing list of live experiences that feel right at home with Soldato’s offerings. 

Visit Soldato Books & Records Website www.soldatobooks.com and follow them on instagram @soldatobooks

Photos by www.sammartucci.com