On Thursday, the bronze bell on the door of Frank Music Company hardly stopped ringing. Dozens of customers had braved the wintry weather to visit the store, some for their first time but all for their last.

After nearly eight decades in business, Frank Music, the last classical sheet music store in New York City, will close on Friday at 5pm.

With a pencil tucked behind her ear, Heidi Rogers, the 63-year-old shopkeeper, puttered around the store, retrieving scores from the shelves piled high with music from the classics – Beethoven, Chopin, Stravinsky – to the arcane. She paused occasionally to look around at the spartan office, tucked away on the 10th floor of a midtown Manhattan building, as if keen not to forget the position of a single score.

Rogers indulged every customer – new and old – at the checkout line. With the faithful patrons who had shopped there for years, she reminisced. With the first-timers, she joked, taking digs at the “freebie” culture that brought about the store’s demise, and guessing their musical forte.

“Jazz?” she asked one young man.

“How’d you know?” he asked, impressed.

Rogers smiled. “I’ve been doing this awhile.”

Heidi Rogers, owner of Frank Music Company. ‘To be replaced by something so inferior – it’s such an insult.’ Photograph: Tim Knox/The Guardian

The store was founded in 1937 by Frank Marx. Rogers first came in with her father, composer Milton Rogers, a longtime client of Frank Music. When she and her father learned that Marx intended to sell the store, Rogers said she insisted he sell it to her, but Marx was reluctant. A combination of persistence and tears eventually won the stubborn shopkeeper over, Rogers said, and in 1978, at the age of 26, she became the store’s owner.

That Frank Music lasted so long – and outlasted others of its kind – is due in large part to Rogers, a gregarious saleswoman with a wicked sense of humor and a certain New York sensibility. For nearly four decades, Rogers has been the beating heart and soul of the classical sheet music store.

“The store was my little stage. Every day I got to do my act,” Rogers said. “And it hurt when no one would come in to see me. Honestly, for the last three years, it was like falling off a cliff. We went from seeing 20 people a day to seeing two people.

Frank Music Company, the last of its kind. Photograph: Tim Knox/The Guardian

“There were days I would come in, unlock the door at 7[am] and wait. I’d wait for the phone to ring or for a customer to come in. And no one would come, all day. On those days I’d just go home and cry.”

Frank Music has struggled in the internet age, as more musicians turn to Amazon or other online sellers that sell scores for less than their brick-and-mortar counterparts charge. It has also had to compete with free downloads, found on websites such as IMSLP, a virtual music library that allows users to download scores at no cost.

“To be replaced by something so inferior – it’s such an insult,” Rogers said. “But if you appeal to people’s lowest instincts, like we’re going to give you this score for nothing, it’s basically saying it has no value.”

Until the very end, Frank Music resisted the creeping digitization of the internet age. The store’s vast inventory, methodically organized by composer, is registered only in Rogers’s brain. She almost never takes credit cards; she prints handwritten receipts; and she records her sales with a pencil on a piece of loose-leaf paper.

“The way other stores bought was very different than the way I bought,” Rogers said. “They would buy 20 copies of one thing that they knew they would sell 20 copies of. I would buy one copy of 20 things they didn’t want to be bothered with.”

The store’s stock boasts, in Rogers’s estimation, hundreds of thousands of scores. The massive, and unique, inventory is what Rogers believes set the store apart. It’s also what attracted an impressive array of celebrity clients, including pianist Emanuel Ax, viola player Lawrence Dutton, violinist Pamela Frank and cellist David Finckel.

“This was the place where there was one of everything. The depth of inventory here is colossal,” said Aaron Van Heyningen, who worked his last shift at Frank Music on Thursday after eight years.

Frank Music Company. ‘You just think, it’s New York – it’ll always be filled with stores like that,’ said Annie Shapero, a vocal student and fragrance reviewer. ‘But it’s not! It’s gone. This is it.’ Photograph: Tim Knox/The Guardian

Sitting in the back under strict orders to ignore the phone, which kept ringing, Van Heyningen remarked that he had never seen this many people.

“If everybody who came today had just came once a year, we wouldn’t have to do this,” he said ruefully.

After Friday, Frank Music’s grand inventory will find a new home at the Colburn School, a prestigious music conservatory in Los Angeles. Rogers said she is happy the school will be able to benefit from the music she amassed over her more than 37 years in business. It also means she will be able to spend more time at her farm in the Catskill mountains, where she raises chickens. She used to sell fresh eggs at her store, along with music.

It was in part the novelty of the city losing its last classical sheet music store that drew some to visit Frank Music in its final days.

Annie Shapero, a vocal student and fragrance reviewer, said she heard about the store’s closure on the radio and had to come in and smell the sheets of music before it was too late.

“It’s an olfactory archive,” Shapero said, holding a book to her nose and inhaling deeply. “It’s a smell that’s disappearing from this city.”

“I think it’s something that you just take for granted living here,” Shapero said. “You just think, it’s New York – it’ll always be filled with stores like that. But it’s not! It’s gone. This is it.”

Waiting on customers – more than the sheets of music – was Rogers’s greatest joy over the years and it’s what she says she’ll miss the most.

“I just love that moment when you put something on the counter and the person goes: ‘Ah! I can’t believe you have this!’ That was really fun. I love that moment,” Rogers said.

Thirty minutes before the store closed on Thursday, Rogers asked the crowd of customers in her tiny shop to pause for a photo.

“I’m a little overwhelmed,” she told them. “I haven’t seen this many people in a long time.”

She snapped the photo and then turned back to the growing line.

“Thank you for waiting so long,” she told a customer.

“My pleasure. Thank you for being here so long,” he told her.