J&M Bookstore

J&M Bookstore has occupied a corner of downtown Auburn since 1953, when George Johnston opened its doors near what is now the War Eagle Wall and Toomer’s Corner. More than seventy years later, the store is still family-operated, a rare thing on a downtown strip where storefronts change hands often as chains rotate in and out. The bookstore markets itself as “An Auburn Family Tradition,” and the phrase is not just a slogan. Generations of Auburn students, alumni, and townspeople have walked through its doors on the way to a home game, using J&M as a landmark as much as a retailer.

While the name reflects its roots as a bookstore, today’s J&M carries a wide range of Auburn University apparel and gifts alongside its book and art-supply sections, from T-shirts and outerwear to jerseys, headwear, and youth clothing sized for the smallest fans in the family. Tailgate essentials, local-market goods, and gameday accessories round out the inventory, making the shop a one-stop source for orange-and-blue gear during football season and a steady presence for everyday Auburn merchandise the rest of the year. Because ownership has stayed within the Johnston family since the founding, buying decisions and the store’s identity have remained locally controlled even as the retail landscape around it has shifted toward regional and national licensing operations.

The store sits at 115 South College Street, in the thick of the downtown shopping district, with regular hours Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., closing on Sundays. Those hours shift around major Auburn University events and football Saturdays, when downtown foot traffic swells and the shop adjusts to meet the crowd. Visitors will find a layout that mixes traditional bookstore fixtures with racks of apparel, a combination that reflects how the business has evolved over decades while keeping its original name and address intact.

The store’s location near the War Eagle Wall and Toomer’s Corner puts it at one of the busiest intersections in Auburn on any given football Saturday, when tens of thousands of fans pass through downtown before and after kickoff. That foot traffic has shaped how the Johnston family has run the business over the decades, keeping the store stocked heavily with gameday-ready gear while still holding onto the book and art-supply sections that reflect its original identity. Long after the crowds clear out on Sunday, the shop settles back into its role as a steady, everyday resource for Auburn students and residents picking up school supplies, a gift, or simply a piece of Auburn apparel for the week ahead.

For anyone exploring Auburn’s independent retail scene, J&M Bookstore is worth visiting as much for its history as for its merchandise. It is one of the few businesses on College Street that can trace its ownership back to the Eisenhower era, and it has done so without becoming a franchise or handing control to an outside corporate group. That continuity, paired with its central location and deep selection of Auburn-branded goods, makes it a genuine local institution rather than simply another licensed apparel outlet. Visitors exploring downtown Auburn on foot will find J&M sitting comfortably alongside the city’s newer boutiques and bookshops, yet its decades of history give it a different weight than a storefront that opened last year, a business that has quite literally watched the university and the town grow up around it, one football season and one graduating class at a time. The family-owned shop keeps regular weekday hours from 9 in the morning to 5 in the evening, with a slightly later Saturday opening at 10, and can be reached at (334) 887-7007 for anyone checking on stock before making the trip downtown.