Photo: Robin Hyde’s attic inside Penman House, by Haru Sameshima.

Under the partial shade of two large mature trees at the intersection of Carrington and Woodward Roads sits Penman House. This building has kept watch over this corner of Tāmaki Makaurau for more than 100 years. Initially built to house the superintendent of the Auckland Mental Hospital and his family, it was converted to a ward for voluntary women patients towards the end of the 1920s. The building is a familiar landmark for many Aucklanders and known more specifically to others as the Grey Lodge – a building vital to writer Robin Hyde’s (Iris Wilkinson) life and work.

Currently, however, the house, and the large pine standing in front of it, are encircled by a chain-link fence. This fence holds numerous signs proclaiming “danger: demolition site” and “asbestos removal in progress”.

Paula Morris, who is currently working on an edition of Robin Hyde's letters from 1938–39, was alerted to this urgent matter by Robin’s son’s widow Lyn, and Mary Paul, a longtime Hyde scholar. From there Paul and Morris worked quickly to pull together an open letter, “pleading for a stay of execution on Penman House”.

The letter, signed in just two days by 195 writers, artists, scholars, historians, literature-related organisations, publishers, booksellers and concerned citizens across Aotearoa was sent on 22 October to Minister for Arts, Culture and Heritage Paul Goldsmith and Minister of Housing, Chris Bishop, Auckland Council and Heritage New Zealand asking that Auckland Council issue a notice of requirement for a heritage order on Penman House. This could see the building protected – demolition or substantial alteration would be prohibited or require special consent.

The letter notes that Penman House is currently owned by Te Tūāpapa Kura Kāinga – Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, which is facilitating the delivery of almost 40 hectares of land in Mt Albert to a number of iwi as part of a planned large-scale urban development. It argues that although the ministry has written about potential adaptative reuse of heritage buildings on the site, neither the ministry or Heritage NZ offered public consultation on the reuse or relocation of Penman House.

Morris insists that the building is vital to the history of Hyde's artistic development and published work, arguably more than Katherine Mansfield's childhood home in Wellington, which is preserved as a museum. “Without Penman House, Hyde would not have had the space, time or support to write,” says Morris. “Her creative energy would have been bled dry with lady-editor social columns, and she would have moved from shabby boarding house to rickety borrowed bach, lonely and broke, desperate to earn enough money to support her son, who had to live with a foster family”.

Hyde voluntarily checked herself into the Grey Lodge numerous times during a turbulent period of her life in the mid 1930s, following an attempt at suicide. The institution, the support of doctors there, and her attic writing space, were a constant in her life across four years – as both a refuge, and a place of significant literary output.

The end of Morris’ previous book about Robin Hyde, Shining Land, is all about Hyde’s Grey Lodge. “In 2021, Haru Sameshima, the photographer with whom I collaborated on Shining Land, took amazing photos inside the building when we were given permission to infiltrate back. We went up to the attic where Hyde worked on so many of her most important books, poetry and articles. It is intensely atmospheric. The house itself had been used as offices for some time, but still had beautiful features, including a stained-glass window and a swooping staircase. At the time I couldn't imagine anyone choosing to demolish it.”

Catriona Ferguson, the Managing Director Auckland Writer’s Festival, another signatory of the open letter, says that Penman House “is more than bricks and mortar, it's a cultural taonga, a vital link to Aotearoa’s literary history and a meaningful way to honour the writing she created here, work that helped shape our national literary heritage. Once lost, the house and the living connection to her work is gone forever.”

The imminent destruction of Penman House speaks of a broader trend. Morris believes that “Auckland seems to love getting rid of its heritage buildings, as though only the future has any merit: it's a sign of our immaturity as a city, I think, and lack of imagination. It reveals our short-sightedness about what makes a city textured, rich, engaging and complex. We destroy first and think later. Then we go away to other cities that have kept their trams and laneways and historic buildings and spend our tourist dollars there, coming back to complain about bland, soulless downtown Auckland.” It is also a broader, national habit – she mentions that in Taranaki, Ronald Hugh Morrison's house “was torn down to make way for a KFC.”

This lack of imagination and ambition in incorporating existing buildings into the future of our urban landscape limits the possibilities that could be considered for Penman House. For Morris, “ideally it would be kept in place and repurposed in any number of ways: community, office, studio and/or performance space, classrooms, art residencies. If it can't stay, it could be moved rather than demolished.”

She is frustrated. “Literary and cultural history do not seem to matter with Penman House: it is easier for the ministry to allow it to be demolished, and for Heritage NZ to sit on its hands, rather than come up with a solution. How much does demolition cost versus removal cost? Can there be consultation and transparency about this, so the public can raise the money to move it?”

Could we make room for writers and our existing literary history alongside more affordable housing in Auckland? Morris argues that “in every major German city, for example, there is a Literature House, a place for study and events.” She queries, “could we have one here, in our biggest city? Could it house – among other things – the Māori writing school that Witi Ihimaera is setting up?” 

For now, Penman House sits on the crest of a small hill, surrounded by a memorial grove of trees dedicated to staff and students of Unitec that have passed away. Behind the chain-link fence there is a removal trailer inserted partially into the entrance of the house. A patch of weedy vegetation is growing over a second story window. Except for this small area of growth, the structure of Penman House appears to be in good repair. A sturdy 1920s kauri building, with irreplaceable significance to our literary landscape, that has managed to last for over 100 years already.