Among Whitcoulls’ Auckland memories

Whitcoulls’ current main Auckland outlet was, up until the mid-1970s, one of the city’s main department stores: John Courts. And the earlier buildings on the site were among Auckland’s earliest major retail outlets. The initial three-storey structure was built in 1899 for the Direct Supply Company to replace that company’s furniture warehouse which had been destroyed by fire the year before.

In 1910 retailer and importer John Court purchased the property to start one of the city’s first department stores; and in 1916 added three more stories, including a roof-garden-tearooms which could seat 160 people. An orchestra provided music every afternoon.

It continued as a department store, under different ownership, until the department store business started to collapse, globally and in New Zealand, in the mid-1970s, when an entrepreneur, with no retail experience, leased it cheaply and started re-leasing parts of it to individual tenants. He happened to be a fan of Gordon Dryden’s then “Powerline” daily talkshow on Radio i, which often featured visiting international authors as guests. Dryden and the entrepreneur first met by accident over drinks in Parliament one evening early in 1995, and on the flight back to Auckland that night, discussed setting up a small bookshop on the rear of the ground floor.

By the end of the next day, Dryden had done a deal to take over the entire Mezzanine floor to set up Gordon Dryden’s Book Corner — as New Zealand’s then biggest paperback bookstore — just up the street from Whitcoulls’ then main Auckland outlet.

It’s big drawcard: a radio studio right in the centre of the store, with a wide window where patrons could watch the daily live 9 a.m. to noon radio program—and talk to author-guests (from Dr Seuss to “Supernature” author Lyall Watson) after the show.

Dryden had no experience running a bookstore but by then had close contacts with the publishing industry. He first sought a successful Hawkes Bay bookseller, one Graham Beattie, to become a partner and manager. But Bookman Beattie accepted a different offer: to become Managing Director of Penguin New Zealand.
So instead Dryden was joined by William Collins’ Sales manager Brian Pankhurst, both as partner and manager. [Later, when Dryden wrote his own first book—a semi-autobiography and futurist vision of New Zealand, Out Of The Red, published by Collins at the end of 1978—Pankhurt bought a special print-run for Gordon Dryden’s Book Corner, and had 400 customers turn up for the book launch, where the main stand-up reviewer was a new Member of Parliament, David Lange.]

Dryden also contracted with Radio I to run a two-hour nightly “University of the Air” during 1975, with a recommended reading list published monthly in advance—and then used as the basis for each evening’s discussion, with different subjects each night, from hobbies to early childhood education—and a team of contracted trainee presenters.

When Dryden quit his Radio i talkshow in late 1976 (with voice problems) Pankhurst kept running the shop, and later purchased Dryden’s shares, and continued running it under until near the end of the decade when he became Managing Director of Whitcoulls, under Brierley’s ownership period. Whitcoulls then moved its main Auckland retail branch into the entire former John Court’s Building where it remains today—but with a big question-mark hovering over its future.