Since 1985, Manhattan’s Rizzoli Bookstore has occupied a spectacular six-story limestone townhouse on Fifty-Seventh Street—their Web site aptly goes in for a bit of self-congratulation, touting the “cast iron chandeliers, ornately decorated vaulting, and a luminous Diocletian window.” You can learn more about the history of the building here. It’s the sort of place that inspires breathless exaltation in book lovers, or even merely book likers; if you were to publish a magazine of bookseller porn, Rizzoli would be the centerfold. Put more baldly, it’s magical.

Alas, in a plot turn that seems ripped from a bad movie, realtors have designs on the building—they want to demolish it and build a high-rise. One can only imagine the cackles that issue from their inner sanctum with so many malignant plumes of cigar smoke.

But fear not. Citizens have come together, as we are wont to do, to preserve Rizzoli as a landmark. Sign the petition to help save it, and, as a bonus, to ensure that these dastardly realtors are left stomping their finely crafted hats.