William Stout Architectural Books carries over 20,000 titles on two floors in the fields of architecture, art, urban planning, graphic and industrial design, furniture and interior design, and landscape architecture. For over thirty years, twenty in the current location, it has been a vital resource for architecture and design books, carrying American and international titles, both in and out of print.

The origins of the bookstore date back to when Bill Stout was a practicing architect and would go to Europe and bring back hard to find European architectural books. His colleagues and friends would ask him to bring them back additional copies and thus the shop was born. About ten years ago, he started William Stout Publishers, which puts out a few books a year, mainly on architecture and landscape in the Bay Area, but also including books on architectural theory, and reprints of important, out of print titles.