2. Fox and Sons Books

Century 21 in You've Got Mail on the Upper West Side

In the movie, Kathleen’s smaller bookstore comes into competition with Fox Books. The building used in the film was a former Barney’s that had just been vacated when the upscale chain filed for bankruptcy. When the movie was filmed, Fox Books was a stand-in for the large bookstore chain Barnes and Noble that had entered the Upper West Side in 1995. Ironically, the locale on Broadway (between 66th and 67th) closed in 2011 and was replaced by an even more commercial Century 21. Barnes and Noble was forced to close more than a hundred locations since.

Century 21 has also had a roller-coaster history in New York City, with the very first shop opening in Brooklyn in 1961, then shutting down in 2020. New Yorkers were excited to welcome the chain back to Manhattan when a new Lower Manhattan location opened in the spring of 2023.