HGTV Picks A Must-See Connecticut Stop For Labor Day Weekend Travelers

CONNECTICUT — The Labor Day Weekend is the time for road trips, and HGTV editors have put together a list of their favorite roadside attractions in each state to plan your summer's-end safari around.

For those heading through Connecticut up or down I-95, a quirky little bookshop in Niantic is a "have to stop at" pick, according to the home design TV network. But maybe to call it a "little bookshop" is underselling it a little bit.

Maybe a lot…

The Book Barn ("A Bibliophile’s Bliss") provides shelf space for over 350,000 used books, with an outdoor campus jammed with gardens, goats and serendipity.

Multiple buildings are home to an entire Dewey Decimal System of genres, sub-genres, niches and the not-so-easily-pigeonholed scribings of authors from every place and era.

"If you’re a book lover, this is the giant backyard of your dreams," HGTV drools. Different whimsically monikered ("Hades," "Ellis Island," among others) buildings are home to all sorts of genres at the main location, but the massive inventory is housed across three sites. The stacks at "The Main Barn" are located at 41 West Main Street, Chapter 3 is down the road at 55 West Main Street, and The Book Barn Downtown is located at 65 Pennsylvania Avenue — all located within a mile of each other.

But don't be popping out your smartphone expecting to do some Amazon-esque searching and scrolling to pinpoint exactly what shelf in what building your rare literary treasure might be found. The Book Barn uses no computers either online or behind the register to catalog its available titles. The owners will take the time to find what you're looking for, but have some mercy and give them a heads-up before you show up.

Listen, it was good enough for the ancient Library of Alexandria and the Imperial Library of Constantinople, it's good enough for The Book Barn, and it will be good enough for you.

The Book Barn opened "The Main Barn" for business in April 1988, offering just three bookcases filled with 800 books, alongside a yard sale couch. A fire in the antique store above the bookstore destroyed nearly everything in 1990. The owners have been clawing back, and then some, since reopening in April 1991.

The operation has, perhaps inevitably, become a social media darling, with Connecticut Redditors raving about how it is "so unassumingly magical," and "fabulous." In fact, one old-timer lamented, "This place was much better before it blew up all over social media. Now whenever I go, it can be hard to get around it gets so busy…"

The Book Barn is open seven days a week, 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and closed Thanksgiving and Christmas. The owners also buy books every day outside at the Main Barn location, no appointment necessary, first come, first served.