Hotels Melbourne
Melbourne Then & Now by Chapman & Stillman is a super book. It shows why visitors to Melbourne in the 1880s were amazed. Here in the Southern Hemisphere was a city larger than most European capitals. In just a decade the population had doubled, to half a million people. Citizens strolled the streets, bursting with pride as their city boomed. Ornate office buildings up to 12 storeys high rivalled those of larger, older cities overseas.
Money was poured into lavishly decorated banks, hotels and coffee palaces. Towers, spires, domes and turrets dominated the city sky line. Lace work appeared everywhere. Cast iron was used to decorate verandas, which grew from one to two stories. By 1870 Australia was producing its own lace work which began to feature Australian flora. During the prosperous 1870s-80s speculative builders built thousand of tightly packed terraces in the inner cities to cope with a rapidly growing population distinctly Australian in style.
A particular feature of the city's boom years were the temperance hotels/coffee palaces. A small number of hotels had always refused to sell alcohol. But the coffee palace, as a viable alternative to hotels, was a Rechabite concept introduced to Melbourne in the 1880s. Coffee palaces were actually much grander and more multi-purpose than pubs.
So the construction of buildings for the temperance movement coincided with a economic boom in Australia and use of richly ornamental High Victorian architecture. I love the high-status names that these hotels were given eg The Grand or The Royal, suggesting that clients should be well dressed and well behaved.
First known as Victoria Coffee Palace 1880, the Vic Hotel was founded by a Temperance League as an alternative to rowdy, bawdy pub accommodation. The original lobby is still in use today.
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An extravagant temperance hotel, designed by Charles Webb in the Second Empire Style, was the Grand Hotel (1883) in Spring St Melbourne. Now called the Windsor Hotel, it was built for a shipping magnate who in the late 1880s sold it to a Temperance Party supporter. At first having 200 rooms, this Second Empire style building was extended to 360 rooms to accommodate overseas and interstate visitors to Melbourne’s 1888 Centenary Exhibition. |