Palace Hotel, Perth

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The Palace Hotel in Perth, Western Australia is a landmark three-storey heritage listed building located in the city's central business district. Originally built as a hotel during the gold rush period of Western Australia's history in 1897, it was converted to banking chambers and offices in the 1980s and now accommodates the Bank of Western Australia.^[1]

The building is located on the most prominent intersection in the financial district of the city, at the corner of St Georges Terrace and William Street and sits in the shadow of one of the tallest buildings in Perth, the 204 metres (670 ft) BankWest Tower.

When the hotel opened for business on 18 March 1897 it was, although slightly smaller than some of its contemporary buildings in other capital cities in Australasia, described as "... one of the most beautiful and elegant hotels in Australasia"^[2]. Other praise included: "... redolent of the bourgeois luxury and splendour of the Paris of Napoleon III" and later "... in its day, as sumptuous a hostelry as any in Melbourne or Sydney."^[3] It operated as licensed premises from 1897 until 1981.

Contents 1 Style and heritage features 2 Cultural significance 3 History 4 1980s redevelopment 5 References

[edit] Style and heritage features

The building is described as being of a 'Federation Free Classical' architectural style. It is three storeys high and of brick and iron construction. It was designed by architects Porter and Thomas and built by prominent miner and real estate investor John De Baun at a cost of £64,000.^[1]

In the early 1970s, a group known as the Palace Guards was formed to lobby planning authorities for the preservation of the building. The building was entered into the register of the National Trust of Australia in June 1973 and elevated to a permanent entry in 1980.^[4] It was recorded as a permanent entry in the state heritage register at the Heritage Council of Western Australia in May 2000.^[5]

In the period leading up to and during the 1980s redevelopment, considerable public protest as well as lobbying by the National Trust of Western Australia ensured that some elements of the original building were preserved. In 1990, legislation enforcing compliance with heritage preservation orders was enacted.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Cultural significance

Due to its ornate and grand style, its prominent position within the city, and being the only building of its type and scale in St George's Terrace, the hotel has been an important landmark in Perth for all of its life. In its early years, the hotel afforded commercial travellers a high level of opulence and comfort while visiting the city and offered a tangible reminder of the wealth and prosperity of the state during the gold boom period.

At the time of its transformation into banking chambers in the 1980s, considerable amounts of nostalgia and acclamation of its place in Perth was made in the local media.^[6][7][8]

[edit] History

The site was first used as a lodging house when the King's Head Hotel operated there from at least 1830, owned and operated by William Dixon. In 1831 Dixon sold it to William Leeder after which it was known as Leeder's Hotel, becoming one of the leading hotels in the town with many important dinners and celebrations conducted there. The Perth Gazette wrote in August 1833:

Few, if any, of [the employed classes] enjoyed a table such as the gentry made merry with at Leeder's Hotel on the occasion of the King’s birthday celebrations in August 1833, with nine types of meat and a choice of three deserts.^[9]

Leeder's Hotel was extended in 1845 by which time it was known as the Freemason's Tavern and housed the first Masonic Lodge in Western Australia. Following the death of Mr Leeder in 1848, his wife transferred management to Julian Carr, a merchant who would later become a prominent politician and Chairman of the Perth City Council from 1861 until 1869. At this time it was known as the Freemason's Hotel with a number of other proprietors running it in the intervening years, including the wife of future Premier Sir Walter James and George Towton, a prominent horseman and hotelier in the state.

A fire at the rear of the hotel in 1888 had destroyed a number of out-buildings and may have contributed to a dilapidated state. American real estate investor and former hotelier John De Baun purchased the property from Mrs Leeder in 1894, along with several other sites along St Georges Terrace. He engaged architects Ernest Saunders Porter and Edmond Neville Thomas to design the new Palace Hotel^[10] for the site with no expense to be spared and many of the construction materials imported. Marble for the fireplaces and mosaic floor tiles for the main entrance and bar-room floors came from Italy. De Baun also commenced construction of the nearby Melbourne Hotel in 1895 in similar style, if not quite the same degree of opulence and grandiosity.

James Thomas Glowrey leased the Palace Hotel from De Baun in 1901^[11] and carried out the first of many additions and modifications to the building, including the addition of bedroom wings on the north and east wings. A newspaper advertisement dated 1903 boasted:

...the hotel as the finest hotel in the State, with 130 bedrooms, a number of suites of private apartments, a writing room and library, fine dining hall, a grand vestibule, electric light and electric elevator and large sample rooms.^[12]

De Baun died in 1911 and ownership passed to the West Australian Trustee Executor and Agency Company Limited while Glowrey's lease was maintained. In 1924 Charles Atkins (Atkins Brothers Pty Ltd) purchased the property for £48,000, keeping Glowrey on as lessee. A younger relative, James Henry Glowrey took over the lease in 1930 and major internal renovations costing £15,000 were undertaken at the same time, including enlarging the bar areas and conversion of the basement billiard room to a new bar area. External renovations were made in 1935 and 1939. In 1959 a major modernisation project commenced costing £160,000 and included installation of air conditioning, private bathrooms, and the replacement of timber verandas with cantilevered concrete verandas. Prior to this refurbishment, engraved lettering saying De Baun's Palace Hotel were displayed in the corbelling above the front entrance.

[edit] 1980s redevelopment

The Commonwealth Banking Corporation purchased the property sometime around 1972 with the intent of redeveloping the site completely. Soon after, there was public realisation of the threat of the demolition of the hotel and a campaign run by a group known as the "Palace Guards" started lobbying government and heritage organisations for its preservation. At the time, J.M. Freeland, Professor of Architecture at the University of New South Wales wrote:

This is a most important building for the history of Australian architecture, being an extreme example of High Victorian architecture. There were never many hotels of its standard in Australia and to my knowledge this is the last of them.^[13]

Alan Bond purchased the hotel and the adjacent Terrace Arcade in 1978 and in 1980 unveiled plans (which had been controversially pre-approved by the Perth City Council) for a modern office block on the north-eastern corner of the site and the demolition of Terrace Arcade, the hotel dining room, the eastern accommodation wing and the dismantling and reconstruction of the northernmost portion of the William Street façade.^{[14] [15]}

Demolition works commenced in August 1981 and restoration of the remaining original hotel was carried out as a joint venture between Bond Corporation and the R&I Bank. Construction of the tower and the demolition works and conversion of the hotel to commercial offices was completed in 1988 and officially opened in August 1989 by Premier Peter Dowding.^[16]

The redevelopment entailed demolition of much of the interior wallspaces, however, the exterior façades facing the two main streets are largely intact, if slightly shortened on the William street frontage. A glass covered atrium joins the tower on the former hotel so that the tower entrances double as undercover access to the building.

[edit] References

Coordinates: 31°57′16.4″S 115°51′24.4″E / -31.954556, 115.856778