Photos: Caravan Book Store in downtown L.A.

Chris Vargas, left, has his weekly Friday night visit with Leonard Bernstein at Caravan Book Store. Said the book collector and L.A. native, “I’ve been coming here for 20 years. It’s my Friday routine when we talk and exchange stories.”

A 1910 copy of “The Story of Hiawatha” is among the leather-bound books at Caravan Book Store. A raft in a downtown awash in rising rents and fast entertainment, it is a refuge where pages matter more than page views, Gutenberg more than Google.

Leonard Bernstein at Caravan Book Store. Gone are the destinations of his childhood: the pet store on Hill, the soda fountain on Grand, the hardware store on Main

Cheryl Tellis of Hacienda Heights looks under a table at an antique book binder’s press in Caravan Book Store. After browsing for 30 minutes while waiting for her dinner date, she said: “This has been a really great accident. It’s my first visit.”

Sixty-one-year-old Caravan Book Store has one of the most distinguished collections of antiquarian books in the city. Owner Leonard Bernstein is not as concerned about the incursions of the Internet and books going out of fashion as he is about readers becoming less curious, less imaginative.

Leonard Bernstein still uses the 1930s-era cash register to ring up sales at Caravan Book Store. Ask how he makes ends meet, and he tells the riddle of the centipede. How does it walk? Only without thinking about it.

Old leather-bound books at Caravan Book Store. The shop won’t be found on the Internet. It has no website, and the store’s Instagram presence, a fleeting nod to the digital world, is a mere echo of its analog insistencies.

Joanne Kim has regular visits with Leonard Bernstein at Caravan Book Store. “This is like my candy store,” the medical student said. She recently purchased a rare 19th century book of love poems by Tennyson. “Leonard made it, so I could afford it.”

An undated photograph of Morris Bernstein, who founded Caravan Book Store in 1954. Some thought him crazy. But he and his wife, Lillian, didn’t like being apart during the day.