A New York City landmark bookstore is the latest independent to bite the dust. Coliseum books, a pillar of the community, will “wind down” operations.

Since 2003, the store has stood at 11 W. 42nd St., opposite the main branch of the New York Public Library. Between 1974 and 2002, it stood at Broadway and 57th Street.Higher rent forced the move.

“These oases are disappearing,” said Christopher Kerr, of Parson Weems LLC, a publisher sales representative firm that does business with Coliseum.

“It’s totally sad,” a night manager at Coliseum, Ron Kolm, said.”It will leave a gaping cultural wound in the neighborhood.” He is co-author of “neo PHOBE,” a novel about a writers’ collective solving a serial murder case, published by Unbearable Books.

Documents obtained by The New York Sun list George Leibson and Irwin Hersch as general partners of Coliseum Books and Café LLC. Mr. Leibson could not be reached by press time.

The store at 11 W. 42nd St. is shaped something like the state of Oklahoma, with a panhandle stretching north to 43rd Street, is stocked with books about gardening, computers, and business. Along the front western wall, an enormous literary backlist and belles lettres beckoned. Yellow-lettered signs that read “Philosophy Western” and “Philosophy Eastern” hang overhead. Its much-trafficked magazine section featured titles ranging from Fangoria to lacanian ink.

Another imperiled independent store is Gotham Book Mart, four blocks north, which is facing eviction.

After Coliseum opened in Midtown, a Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue relocated a couple blocks south, to 46th Street. Coliseum felt that this was “a possible contributing factor to sales decreases,” Mr. Kerr said.

No shit.