Claire van den Broek is the owner of Huxley & Hiro Booksellers, located in downtown Wilmington. Read her story as this week’s #PeopleOfWilmDE!
“I was born and raised in the Netherlands and moved to the United States after high school to attend the University of Oregon. I ended up marrying an American and stayed to pursue my PhD. I’ve spent most of my adult life working as a college professor and a linguist working with the Department of Defense. After my best friend and co-owner, Dr. Ryan Eanes, moved to Wilmington while teaching
first at Washington College and then Temple University, I began to visit Wilmington and fell in love with the community. We immediately saw a great future here and we knew this was a place we wanted to invest in, so we went into business together in 2019 by buying the building and beginning the remodel of the Huxley and Hiro Building.
Here are three fun facts about me:
- Although I was born and raised in the Netherlands, I’ve visited all fifty American states. Someday I hope to visit every country in the world; I think I have been somewhere around 70, give or take a few that may or may not be acknowledged by everyone as a sovereign country.
- As a linguist, I also work as a contractor, mostly for various American Defense/Military divisions. My job is not as exciting as it sounds except for the occasional discovery that my contract and OPSEC training prevents me from sharing.
- I own two llamas, Georgia and Lilah, who are mother and daughter.
Wilmington is a vibrant, diverse, and warm community where we immediately felt at home. We are surrounded by people who love our city and see its fantastic potential as the next trendiest city on the East Coast. Everyone has been so welcoming to us as we opened our bookstore and began to partner with nonprofits and other businesses in our area.
When we ran into challenges with our contractor, we immediately had customers who had barely known us for weeks reach out to offer us a place to stay, parties to join, etc., which really saved our first Christmas at the bookstore. We knew we needed to stay in town because of Christmas sales and our families live far away, so we were so grateful for how openly the community embraced us and helped us feel at home.
Our store dog Hiro was once dubbed “The Mayor of Market Street” by the Wilmington Alliance, though of course our cats Huxley (@TheOriginalHuxley) and Tolstoy (@TolstoyTheBear) are eagerly competing for the title and regularly hold audiences in either the apartment windows above the bookstore or in the bookstore itself. They have some competition from four very cute cats who can be seen in their apartment windows in LOMA though!
Now we are getting ready to move the bookstore to a bigger location at 601 N. Market Street, where we will bring in a café, retail incubator space, and we’ll have an events venue on the second floor. We’re still floating ideas for the retail space we own at 419 N. Market Street, but we’re honing in on a concept for a wine bar and small market with provisions such as snacks, nuts, pasta, coffee beans, etc.
Wilmington, and Delaware in general, offer amazing opportunities to millennials like ourselves. The cost of living makes it much more feasible for young people to own their own home and start a business than in most of coastal America. There is so much excitement here about Wilmington’s future as well, it’s infectious. From larger developers like the Buccini Pollin Group (which has been exceptionally supportive!) to small businesses like Scout Café, Bean Head, and coffee roaster Dueling Rabbits to non-profits like Delaware Futures, Downtown Visions, and the Delaware Historical Society, we have a community working hard and happily to make Wilmington the best city to live on the East Coast. I don’t think we could have been anywhere near as successful with our new bookstore as we are now in Wilmington; we owe a great deal to the community.
We regularly work with non-profits at the bookstore to raise funds and bring in events for the community, including the League of Women Voters, the Junior League, the Delaware Historical Society, and Delaware Futures. Personally, I’ve also done work as a translator for Translators Without Borders for years, and I try to use as much time as I can for civic engagement, attending board meetings, community group gatherings, and so on to find new ways to partner with or assist organizations in our community.
We are proud of how our bookstore contributes to Wilmington’s cultural and economic revival, reflecting our city’s broader development efforts. By being part of a thriving business community in Wilmington, we are not just bringing indie retail to downtown, but we are working hard to contribute our share to the city’s mission of becoming a hub of innovation and community engagement.
If you haven’t been downtown in a while, come wander on into our bookstore, check out the amazing cafes and restaurants near us, and stroll down the riverfront. You’ll find a beautiful, green, and welcoming community full of people who are proud to be Wilmingtonians. If you’ve already joined us downtown, continue to support local businesses so that we can maintain a beautiful 15 minute community with indie retail and restaurants. Every dollar you spend locally makes a massive difference in keeping jobs here and ensuring we can find unique, locally produced goods.
We love seeing new businesses come in, such as 10K Vintage across the street from our bookstore. Market Street has changed dramatically, and we always have a few pictures on hand to show the suburbanites who may not have been downtown in a while. They’re inevitably surprised at how amazing it looks. We’re also excited that David Bromberg and Nancy Josephson were able to work with us to help us buy their building, so that we can bring coffee, more books, and a new retail incubator in there. Our hope is to eventually help feed new retail start-ups into the storefronts that still sit empty.
Our bookstore is open until 8pm on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, so we tend to have a late start to the evening, but when we have some time off, our ideal weekend day starts with a stroll down the riverfront to Riverfront Bakery, after which we like to head across town to the Delaware Art Museum where we’ve become members. At night, you will regularly find us at Farmer and the Cow enjoying their monthly dinner special and a chat with the lovely staff, and then The Quoin rooftop bar for drinks, which is fabulous even in winter.
On a typical day off you will probably find me at Scout Café. Nick has done a fabulous job renovating an adorable house into the cutest coffee shop in Delaware. They also have a huge outdoor garden space where they host markets. I can rarely finish the whole thing because it’s huge, but I love their coffee and tea “flights” where you can sample specials like the Cherry Blossom Latte and Affogato. Great pastries from our favorite bakery Hell’s Belles there as well. My other new favorite is Bean Head in Trinity Vicinity which has a killer Cinnamon Toast Crunch Latte and Smoked Hazelnut Latte.
We also love the Ladybug Festival, which highlights women in music. It’s a huge party downtown, and we’ve hosted their acts on our own stage as well. The Ladybug Festival is the must-see event of the spring season!
Best place to catch live music? Definitely The Queen; that’s the place to be downtown. Every year they bring in more major acts like big rock and metal bands, and they had an awesome Edgar Allan Poe speakeasy event that combined cocktails, literature, and theater. We love their upstairs flea markets and Wednesday live music happy hours too.
How would I like the city of Wilmington to grow in the next couple years? The city of Wilmington needs to work with local developers like BPG to subsidize a grocery store downtown; whatever it takes. Downtown remains a food desert when it comes to groceries, and more high end restaurants are not going to fix that. We also want to see more effort made to bring retail businesses into the empty storefronts, for example through grants to millennial and Gen Z owned retail start-ups, especially businesses that have a strong commitment to community and the environment (B corps for example), and minority owned businesses that represent Wilmington’s diversity. A diverse community is a stronger community.”
