Lewis Eady - they still got rhythm in the soul

Lewis Eady is no longer part of the downtown Auckland streetscape but, as GILBERT WONG discovers, the melody lingers on in this family.

The past always looks best in black and white. The photograph shows the guitar section of Lewis Eady Ltd in Queen St, some time in the 1960s.

In the background is the quaintly named Record Browserie. Stern busts of Beethoven and other great composers stare down, ensuring that the customers know they have entered a place serious about music.

The building at 192 Queen St was not the original premises. Lewis Eady, an English immigrant piano repairer, had earlier set up shop in Mills Lane. He prospered at a time when the piano was as much a part of a well-to-do household as the bath. Auckland was growing and so was the piano population.

He and his five sons commissioned their landmark seven-storey Georgian building in 1927. From the Queen St entrance it had a double-height mezzanine reached by a grand sweeping staircase lit by chandeliers. The balustrades were solid brass, cast into the shape of lyres, clefs and staves.

According to the building's Conservation Plan, prepared by the Historic Places Trust, " ... the mezzanine formed a gallery on either side which overlooked the shop. It was supported on cantilevered beams, each bearing the name of a famous composer. A blackwood stair led to the piano showroom backing into High St. The newels of the stair had bronze figures which supported lamps and a screen at the top of the stair was fitted with leadlights embodying musical symbols. Large chandeliers hung down the centre of the double volume space. The balustrading around the gallery expressed music symbols. Two roof lights let in natural light."

The concert chamber, built at the level of High St and now occupied by the fashion retailer World, was designed to seat 350 people, with a balcony that could seat another 50. Above the proscenium arch was a large plastered motif of a lyre. Square fluted pilasters divided the chamber into bays. Above rose a barrel vaulted ceiling.

On the building's Queen St frontage rose a 5m oregon mast, used to broadcast the pioneer private radio station 1ZR from 1928 until closed by the Government in 1933.

John Eady, Lewis Eady's grandson, still runs the business as managing director. But the fortunes of the family business have waxed and waned, largely with the flagging popularity of the piano, the core of their business. The edifice for which they are best known is no longer in family hands, nor in anything close to its original glory.

But the family hope to restore some of the retail drama of the past by opening their own premises at 75 Great South Rd, complete with the return of a Concert Chamber, 116 years after their grandfather first opened for business.

Says John Eady, "I'm not sure this is a business that will make you wealthy. But if you ask why we're still here, I suppose it's because we love music."

As a reason for work it has a simplicity few could argue with. The official opening is on Friday.