Queen Street stories: department stores and cinemas

Join Rebecca Freeman (Senior Specialist Historic Heritage, Auckland Council) and Marguerite Hill (Heritage Researcher, Auckland Council) to hear about Queen Street’s cinemas and department stores. If you really wanted to go shopping in the days before suburban malls, you needed to head to Queen Street and Karangahape Road. There were five major department stores in central Auckland during the twentieth century. Three of these were on Queen Street: Smith and Caughey's and Milne and Choyce were an upmarket, luxury shopping experience, while John Court was a family-friendly alternative. Since the first films were screened in Auckland in the 1890s, cinema became an entertainment sensation, rivaling and eventually surpassing live theatre, vaudeville and opera as the most popular form of recreation and entertainment. Listen in to find out where Queen Street’s cinemas were located, and how the technology and theatre experience developed and changed from 1910 to 1990. Sources: Cinemas Ben Schrader, 'Theatres, cinemas and halls - Theatre rises, cinema declines', Te Ara - the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/photograph/42391/demolishing-the-majestic-theatre Hayward, B.W, and Selwyn P. Hayward (1979). Cinemas of Auckland 1896-1979. Lodestar Press, Auckland. Department stores New Zealand Fashion Museum http://nzfashionmuseum.org.nz/ Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga, Milne and Choyce Department Store (Former) https://www.heritage.org.nz/the-list/details/2620 Each of the department stores mentioned have their own company histories, which are available from Auckland Libraries. Image: John Court Limited on the corner of Victoria Street East and Queen Street, 1961, photographer Vera Jane Ellis, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections, 958-112