Above: Ryan Eanes and Claire van den Broek are partners in the Huxley & Hiro bookstore, which is named after their pets. Portrait photo by David Tabler.
By Bob Yearick
Everyone knows about love at first sight — an instant, romantic connection between two people.
But what about platonic love at first sight? Is that a thing?
Of course. Look no further than Claire van den Broek and Ryan Eanes, co-owners of Huxley & Hiro, the new bookstore in downtown Wilmington. They met on a flight from San Francisco to Eugene, Ore., some 10 years ago and became instant BFFs.
“We were seated next to each other and we just started talking,” says van den Broek. They quickly discovered that they were both headed to Eugene and the University of Oregon, where Eanes was to pursue his Ph.D. in media studies and van den Broek, who earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees there, would soon become an adjunct professor in German and Dutch.
van den Broek’s husband at the time picked her up at the Eugene airport, and they gave Eanes a ride to his apartment. Eanes remembers van den Broek’s hubby being less than thrilled with her new friendship. “He said all of one word on the way home.”
Laughing, van den Broek adds: “He didn’t know Ryan is gay.”
The new friends kept in touch over the ensuing decade while van den Broek stayed in Eugene, and Eanes, who jokes that he has “pretty bad ADHD,” moved around a bit. He worked in the media industry in New York City for a few years, then decided to go into teaching at the college level. He first went back to Oregon as a teaching assistant, then moved across the country to become an assistant professor at Washington College in Chestertown, Md. After four years there, he joined the faculty at Temple University, where he teaches advertising psychology and branding.
‘The Right Place’
Eanes found the pace of life in Chestertown a bit too slow, so three years ago he moved to Wilmington, which, in addition to being closer to Temple, offered a vibrant cultural scene. He quickly fell in love with the city.
“Being here just a few months, I could see myself settling down here,” he says. “It just felt like it was the right place for me. I’ve never felt that before as an adult.”
van den Broek began visiting him about six years ago, and together they would browse the shelves at Ninth Street Book Shop, the long-time downtown Wilmington landmark. By the time Jack and Gemma Buckley closed the store in January of 2018, van den Broek, born and raised in the Netherlands, also had succumbed to the charms of Delaware’s largest city.
“It’s very progressive and diverse,” she says. “It feels like a small community but it has a lot of the resources of a city, which is a really nice balance.”
Adds Eanes: “And you’re close to everything — New York, Philly, D.C.”
Both book lovers, the best friends soon became determined to fill the void left by Ninth Street. They discussed the idea with downtown business owners as well as David Teague, a children’s book author and professor at the University of Delaware, who had attempted to keep Ninth Street afloat through an alliance with art groups and other local partners.
Grand Opening
In 2019, van den Broek bought the property at 419 Market St. that now is home to the Huxley & Hiro shop as well as some upstairs apartments. The plan was to renovate the apartments, which she and Eanes would move into, and they would partner in the bookstore.
The pandemic delayed those plans, and also robbed them of potential customers, as downtown businesses began allowing employees to work remotely.
The store is located at 419 N. Market St., in the heart of downtown. Photo Claire van den Broek.
But they soldiered on, and Huxley & Hiro, with an assist from Mayor Mike Purzycki’s office and Downtown Visions, held a grand opening on Oct. 27 of last year.
Speaking at the ribbon cutting, Purzycki said: “There’s something about a bookstore that flies in the face of the idiocy that’s taking place in so many parts of the country these days. A bookstore symbolizes the stretching and enlarging of the American mind, and not the constriction of it.”
He went on to note that small business is the “essence of cities.”
“Wilmington’s economic success for much of our history was tied to large corporations,” the mayor said. “What’s changed is that the economic activity in our city now is of the small entrepreneurs, the risk takers.”
“The community has been so welcoming,” van den Broek says. “We were already invited to a holiday party and we knew about half the party.”
She says sales have been good. Literary fiction, history, and social science books, along with children’s books and works by local authors, are customer favorites.
“Our customer base is younger people as well as elderly people and retirees,” van den Broek says. “Retired women are big part of our customer base. We feel like Gen X comes into bookstores the least.
No ‘Supermarket Literature’
“Also, categories that publishers say sell well are not in fact that popular in our market. YA and romance sell very little, and we sell almost no religion books.”
Adds Eanes: “What you might call supermarket literature doesn’t sell well here.”
Eanes and van den Broek report that sales have been brisk in the store’s first three months of operation. Photo provided.
They both credit a story in the November Out & About with bringing in many customers. A postcard mailing and social media have attracted others, and a clever billboard, located strategically on Rt. 202 to catch the attention of suburban book lovers, has been effective. The billboard depicts a little girl and a dinosaur holding books next to this copy: “Dinosaurs didn’t read . . . and now they’re extinct. Coincidence? Huxley & Hiro. Bookstore now open. Downtown Wilmington.”
While Eanes continues to teach at Temple, van den Broek, who is remarried, is teaching remotely as an adjunct professor at Southern New Hampshire University and the University of Oregon. After many delays in the building’s renovation, she and her husband have moved into one of the apartments, and Eanes, currently teaching at Temple’s campus in Japan, will live in another when he returns in May.
The bookstore, which is named after her cat, Huxley, and his dog, Hiro, has a B Corp Certification, meaning it meets high standards of performance, accountability, and transparency, including social and environmental issues.
“Our mission is to serve and support the community,” van den Broek says. “We are not focused on making a profit; instead, we hope to create new jobs, highlight local arts and crafts, and offer our space to local non-profit organizations.”
The store has already held several events in cooperation with entities such as the state library system and the Delaware Historical Society. The partners also are setting up a program with Delaware Futures that will teach students about book advocacy and the importance of literature.
“For instance,” says van den Broek, “they’ll learn how to write a letter to the school board advocating for banned books.”
Many of the store’s events support minorities. In February, for instance, while the nation is celebrating Black History Month, Huxley & Hiro has designated it “Why Just the Past? Black Future Month.”
The kickoff celebration takes place Friday, Feb. 2, at 6 p.m., with Afro-futurist author W.A. Simpson reading and signing autographs.
Drop in. You might even get to meet Huxley and Hiro.
—For more information about coming events, go to huxleyandhiro.com.
