Celebrating the Third Place

Commemorating the places where American communities gather, a compendium of stories and photographs that celebrate the pleasures of public spaces.

Nationwide, more and more entrepreneurs are committing themselves to creating and running “third places,” also known as “great good places.” In his landmark work, The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg identified, portrayed, and promoted those third places. Now, more than ten years after the original publication of that book, the time has come to celebrate the many third places that dot the American landscape and foster civic life.

With twenty black-and-white photographs, Celebrating the Third Place brings together fifteen firsthand accounts by proprietors of third places, as well as appreciations by fans who have made spending time at these hangouts a regular part of their lives. Among the establishments profiled are a shopping center in Seattle, a three-hundred-year-old tavern in Washington, D.C., a garden shop in Amherst, Massachusetts, a coffeehouse in Raleigh, North Carolina, a bookstore in Traverse City, Michigan, and a restaurant in San Francisco.

Praise for The Great Good Place:

“The great value of this book is that Mr. Oldenburg has given us an insightful and extremely useful new lens through which to look at a familiar problem.” —New York Times Book Review

“Examines gathering places and reminds us how important they are. People need the “third place” to nourish sociability.” —Parade

“Oldenburg believes that the powerful need in humans to associate with one another will inevitably lead to the revival of places where, as the theme song to Cheers, the TV show, so aptly puts it, 'everyone knows your name.' We'll drink to that.” —Booklist