Stay Gold Books brings the neighborhood into its Regent Square storefront.
Inside Stay Gold Books in Pittsburgh’s Regent Square
Stay Gold Books opened in Regent Square in March 2024 in a South Braddock Avenue storefront that had gone dark after the pandemic.
Run by former educators Corey and Carrie Wittig, the shop draws on their teaching lives. Carrie taught language arts; Corey, whose 40th birthday coincided with Stay Gold’s opening, built teen learning labs at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. “All the free, drop-in, afterschool, informal learning stuff,” Corey says. “We’re really motivated by that, and we approach the bookshop the same way.”
The decision to open a bookstore came after a period that forced a reset. In December 2020 — amid COVID and while the couple were raising young children — Carrie was diagnosed with breast cancer. “Our life had drastically changed,” Corey says. “It led us to considering different ways of working and living — and really wanting to keep things local in our neighborhood if we could.”
Carrie wrote the business plan. They opened without outside capital and turned to the neighborhood for help, raising about $14,000 through a GoFundMe campaign. “People wanted a bookstore here,” Carrie says. In its first year, Stay Gold hosted 105 free programs, from author talks and storytimes to book launches and book clubs. Corey runs Stay Dead, a horror club that grew large enough to meet twice a month. There is also the Sunday Morning Salon, focused on social and political nonfiction, and Stay Gay, run by bookseller Rory Bocan.
For You, For Your Family, For Everyone
“We’re picky, but not snobby,” Carrie says.
Gifts are treated with equal intention. Most come from local or small U.S. makers, including Pittsburgh Personified merchandise and hyper-local magnets and ornaments, like one modeled after the Bacchus head on Braddock Avenue. “He’s kind of the neighborhood deity,” Corey jokes. Regent Square’s flat streets, proximity to Frick Park, dog walkers and families with strollers all feed foot traffic. The Wittigs have lived nearby for more than a decade. Their kids walk four minutes to the neighborhood school.
“We have a very neighborhood life,” Carrie says. The couple see Stay Gold as part of an ecosystem, not a standalone destination. Used bookstores nearby, coffee shops down the block, restaurants old and new — all of it, Corey says, can coexist. “It doesn’t have to be one bookstore, one coffee shop, one thing. People bounce between neighborhood places.”
Being a community space, Carrie adds, “is the number one thing for us.”
1104 S. Braddock Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15218 | 412.226.8870
Open Monday-Saturday, 11 am-8 pm; Sunday, 11 am-6 pm
Story by Aakanksha Agarwal
Photos by Justin Merriman
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