“My consciousness was raised,” Bankerd says. “If we thought we could have saved that bookshop, we would have done something. We weren’t thinking. Now people are. We’ve lost one, we don’t want to lose another one.”

Bankerd moved to Cambridge in 1963, she says, and began to haunt used bookstores, searching for architectural and cooking books.

She says she was drawn to the Starr Book Shop for its quirkiness and “hickledy-pickledy” quality.

“You find books that are in poor condition that you can find a place for in your library, books you didn’t even know you needed until you found them there,” Bankerd says. “There’s a lot of happenstance, a lot of discovery.”

And the store simply attracted a strange assortment of characters, she says.

She says she remembers one old woman who would stand in the corner of the bookstore holding a bird.

“There was a sense that people were taken in because they liked books,” Bankerd says.

Today, the shelves are organized into sections from the more traditional philosophy to Judaica.

A critical analysis of William Faulkners Requiem for a Nun sits a few shelves away from a tattered cookbook.

Piles of books line the floor and a small television in the corner of the front desk, near a pair of tap shoes and a shriveled eggplant, plays the afternoon news.

“It was a place people met. You see neighbors, it becomes a community center,” Bankerd says. “This casual contact is very important. It makes a stronger community.”

But Chapman says Bankerd’s efforts would be better spent looking for another space within the Square.

“I would love to see him relocate somewhere else in the Square that’s a more appropriate location,” Chapman says.

He says the Lampoon has been trying to push the Starr to relocate for more than 10 years.

Each time, “[Starr] would say ‘Don’t do this because I’ve been here a long time,’” Chapman says. “So we always put it off.”