Barnes & Noble

"A bookstore is first and foremost a place of aspiration. People enter it to pursue their personal passions, to cultivate their minds, and to nourish their dreams." - Len Riggio

Beginning with a single college bookstore in 1965, Mr. Riggio built one of the largest enterprises in the history of American retail upon core principles that have remained constant through decades of exponential growth and evolution.

The unparalleled expansion of Barnes & Noble across the nation from the 1980s through today, created a network of community-based institutions that are, in Mr. Riggio's description, "piazzas of contemporary culture."

Making the aspirational power of books, and the opportunities it fosters, accessible to an unprecedented population of readers in welcoming venues, Barnes & Noble created new public spaces with unique meaning for both individuals and families.

The Barnes & Noble bookstore Seattle Washington

Barnes & Noble is the nation’s bookstore of choice, from New York to Seattle (pictured here).

Each Barnes & Noble store is a valuable resource for the community it serves.

Barnes & Noble also sets the standard for college bookstores (pictured: University of Pennsylvania).

The same commitment to customers and communities has fueled the growth of GameStop.

"In a truly just America, all citizens have a responsibility to pursue the public good, including business people like me. . . .

What we ourselves accomplish is much less important than what we leave behind."

- Len Riggio

David Dinkins, former mayor of New York, greets Len Riggio at the dedication of Haley Farm’s Lynch-Riggio Chapel, July 18, 2004.

Mr. Riggio’s long-standing devotion to many philanthropic initiatives is driven by the same essential commitment to aspiration, education, egalitarianism, and opportunity that has fueled the growth of Barnes & Noble. He has served on nearly two dozen not-for-profit boards and brought his gifts for innovation and design, his business savvy, and his overriding sense of social justice to bear on creating groundbreaking and sustainable approaches to furthering the missions of organizations dedicated to promoting civil and human rights, education, literacy, and the arts.

Len Riggio and his wife, Louise. Their philanthropic initiatives reflect a commitment, in Len's words, to "serving the aspirants in this world, not just the already arrived."

"In the ark design, Maya Lin has created a new metaphor for the Haley Farm Freedom School and a lasting symbol of our covenant to complete the unfinished work of the Civil Rights Movement. The Chapel is a place of safety and shelter for the thousands of young people who come to Haley Farm each year to learn, worship, and train to become the next generation of advocates for children and families." - Len Riggio

For ten years, Mr. Riggio served on the board of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), founded in 1973 by Marian Wright Edelman to challenge the United States to raise its standards by improving policies and programs for children. In 1996 he helped lead the Stand for Children march on Washington to focus national attention on children’s issues.

He has been a generous patron of CDF’s Haley Farm Freedom School, in Clinton, Tennessee, that is committed to intergenerational leadership development. Since its founding in 1994, countless young leaders have been trained at Haley Farm, including thousands of college and high school students who have, in turn, operated literacy programs and Freedom Schools for tens of thousands of children across America.

Mr. Riggio and his wife, Louise, have built two magnificent buildings at Haley Farm: the Langston Hughes Library and the ark-inspired Riggio-Lynch Interfaith Chapel, named in honor of Mr. Riggio and the political activist Bill Lynch, former Deputy Mayor of New York and CDF board member. Both buildings were designed by the internationally renowned artist and architect, Maya Lin, best known for her acclaimed Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in Washington, D.C.

In 2009, Mr. Riggio chaired the host committee for the New York celebration of the centennial anniversary of the NAACP.

Dancers celebrate the opening of the Lynch-Riggio Chapel, 2004.

The Langston Hughes Library, Haley Farm.

"The people who came to study at Brooklyn Tech knew no boundaries, and were themselves privileged with the desire to learn, had the work ethic to achieve, and the imagination to aspire and to dream." - Len Riggio

Passionate about helping to address what he calls the "unfinished business" of the Civil Rights Movement in America, Mr. Riggio is also a tireless advocate for public education, literacy, and the arts. "A true democracy cannot exist without a national commitment to quality public education," he says.

Characteristically, his belief in the importance of public education took a pioneering form when he initiated and organized a now $31-million drive to create the first-ever private endowment for a public high school in America, Brooklyn Technical High School, from which Mr. Riggio graduated in 1958. He is also a director of the Fund for Public Schools, established in 2002 by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to advance the city’s efforts toward education reform through public-private partnerships.

Mr. Riggio and his wife also created the ambitious Writing and Democracy initiative at The New School, an undergraduate course of study that seeks to merge study and practice, the aesthetic and the social, through an innovative program of writing workshops and close reading seminars. As The New School explains, "The Len and Louise Riggio Writing and Democracy Program anchors itself in the idea that reading and writing are the engines of democratic literacy."

A recent graduation ceremony at Brooklyn Tech.

Principal Randy Asher, Floyd Warkol ’65, Len Riggio ’58, and New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein announce a $21-million campaign for Brooklyn Tech, May 2008.

"Dia:Beacon was built by and for the artists in our collection. . . . Walking through these galleries, one notes the genius of the artist-not the intervention of the curator; the beauty of the art, not the impediments of the architecture. . . . The model we wish to create is not the model of building great museums, but a model of patronage which allows artists to create works of art at a time and in a place and in a context of their choosing." - Len Riggio

Mr. Riggio’s eight-year service as chairman of the board of trustees of the Dia Art Foundation supplied the leadership, vision, and generosity to help make Dia:Beacon Riggio Galleries, the world’s largest contemporary art museum, a reality. Opened in May 2003, Dia:Beacon is home to the foundation’s renowned permanent collection of major work by major artists from the 1960s to the present, including Joseph Beuys, Walter De Maria, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Robert Smithson, and Richard Serra.

Shaped by a master plan created by artist Robert Irwin and featuring a design for the surrounding landscape, Dia:Beacon occupies a nearly 300,000-square-foot historic printing factory located on the Hudson River in Beacon, New York. Dia:Beacon’s expansive galleries have been specifically designed for the display of the artworks to which Dia is committed, many of which, because of their character or scale, could not be easily accommodated by more conventional museums.

Dia:Beacon welcomes more than 100,000 visitors each year, enhancing the legacy of the artists it champions and enriching the cultural imagination of the public.

Richard Serra, installation view of Torqued Ellipse II, Double Torqued Ellipse, and Torqued Ellipse I, 1996- and 2000, 2000. © Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries, 2002. Photo: Michael Govan. © Dia Art Foundation.

"Throughout our history, Americans have always responded to crisis by providing help, neighbor to neighbor, person to person, heart to heart. The efforts of Project Home Again to supply housing to poor and working class families in New Orleans follows this tradition, and hopes to raise the bar as well." - Len Riggio

Len and Louise swap homes with the Hayes family, whose home was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

The reach of Mr. Riggio’s generosity has been deep as well as wide, and always deeply personal, perhaps never more so than in his response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Since that tragedy struck New Orleans in 2005, Mr. Riggio and his wife, Louise, have applied their resources and talents to help rebuild the promise of the city-one house and one family at a time.

The not-for-profit Project Home Again (PHA), established by Len and Louise Riggio, built and donated 101 high-quality, efficiently constructed houses for low- and moderate-income families who lost their homes to Katrina. Each home was provided absolutely free in exchange only for the empty lot of the family’s damaged previous home.

PHA is now the largest private builder of homes in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina.

Project Home Again has already built 50 homes in New Orleans.

Project Home Again built 101 homes in New Orleans.

Another 50 homes will be completed and donated by April 2011.

An aerial view of the homes built through Project Home Again.

Mr. Riggio’s philanthropic activities and his advocacy of equality and diversity have earned numerous awards, including the Ellis Island Medal of Honor and the Frederick Douglass Medallion. In 2002, he received the Americanism Award from the Anti-Defamation League, its highest honor; the citation praised his efforts "to celebrate diversity and make the dream of freedom and equality a reality for so many Americans."

More important than these recognitions, however, are the daily operations and enduring influence of the projects and institutions Mr. Riggio has played a critical role in making possible. As he continues to guide the business of Barnes & Noble, he continues as well to apply his energy and insight to what he insists is the "quest for social justice," and to, as he likes to say, "serving the aspirants in this world, not just the already arrived."

Len Riggio at the dedication of Haley Farm Freedom School.