Downtowns should have bookstores. Along with high-end coffee shops, bookstores are the leading indicator that a city is an intellectually curious place. The more books and the more coffee, the better.

Too bad Barnes & Noble on Smithfield Street has announced it will be closing early next year. The store has been a magnet for book lovers since 1994, when it moved into some of the space that had once housed Gimbels department store.

The cryptic reason the chain gave for the store's closing was the expiration of its lease. Even so, a Barnes & Noble spokesman said it will "continue to look for other opportunities in Downtown Pittsburgh as the market grows."

What do book lovers do then? There's the Carnegie Library branch across the street, but that's a different kind of literary experience. And, although demolition on Fifth Avenue recently forced the closing of a Bradley's Book Cellar, the discounter still has an outlet in Macy's.

Given all that, the city will soon have no major bookstore Downtown, and Pittsburghers should tremble at the symbolism. What will out-of-towners think when they discover that such a center of history, art and culture doesn't have a big store with aisles and aisles of books, the latest literary magazines and political journals in its central business district?

We hope Barnes & Noble -- or one of its rivals -- reconsiders the value of a full-scale bookseller in the heart of our city. We also hope development leaders gauge the void this will leave in a downtown that's trying to repackage itself as a good place to live.

To some, it's just another store closing. To many others, this is bigger and it says something about Pittsburgh.