Brooklyn’s Best Vintage Bookstore Is in His Living Room

On a recent Sunday, few moments passed when Bill Hall wasn’t answering his home’s buzzer. He led a succession of fashionable Brooklynites through his entryway and into his sunny living room, which is lined with vintage fashion magazines, photo books from Guy Bourdin and Ron Jude and obscure German design quarterlies.

“Three big libraries just came in with 300 copies of The World of Interiors from the 1990s and 2000s, which are kind of hard to find,” Mr. Hall, a 60-year-old man in a rumpled shirt with clear-framed glasses balanced on his nose, said to a chic couple, gesturing toward the magazines on a nearby Eames bookshelf.

Mr. Hall’s home, in a three-story building in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, doubles as High Valley Books, a shop with more than 50,000 volumes of books and magazines, along with ephemera including a collection of paper-thin wood veneer samples and matchbox-size Lilliput Dictionaries. The store has become a source of inspiration and archival research for fashion designers, photographers and stylists who peruse the stacks that take up much of Mr. Hall’s living room and basement. (He lives upstairs with his wife and two daughters.)

Visits, by appointment only, can be made only through the store’s landline or via DM on Instagram. First-timers receive a tour of the store, and from there Mr. Hall guides them through the stacks according to their tastes. He also takes photos of willing customers with their finds and posts them on social media.

“I like to know who’s here,” he said during a rare lull. “I like to know their names, meet them at the door, and I like to introduce people to each other.”

Rowan Thompson, a brand strategist at a design firm, stopped in with her friend Wesley Chau, an industrial designer.