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 in 1897 as a hotel during the gold rush period of Western Australia's history, it was converted to banking chambers and offices in the 1980s and now accommodates the Perth headquarters of Woods Bagot, Adapptor and Hatchd. 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.
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". 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." It operated as licensed premises from 1897 until 1981.
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 mining entrepreneur and real-estate investor John De Baun at a cost of £64,000.
In 1973, a public lobby group known as The Palace Guards was formed to push state planning authorities for the preservation of the building. Assisted by a Builders Labourers Federation green ban, the building was entered into the register of the National Trust of Australia in June 1973 and elevated to a permanent entry in 1980 "as a first-class example of the quality of building at the time of the gold rush".
In the period leading up to and during the 1980s redevelopment, lobbying from The Palace Guards, the National Trust of Western Australia and the public at large pushed for the retention of some elements of the original building. In 1990, legislation enforcing compliance with heritage preservation orders was enacted and the site became the subject of the first heritage agreement in the State. It was recorded as a permanent entry in the state heritage register at the Heritage Council of Western Australia in May 2000.
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 Georges 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.
Prior to the construction of the Perth Town Hall in 1870, the site (which then housed the Freemasons' Hotel) was the pre-eminent social and political focus of the town—important decisions such as the establishment of a local police force in 1851 were made there. At the time of its transformation into banking chambers in the 1980s, considerable amounts of nostalgia and acclamation of its place in Perth were reflected in the local media.
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 Henry Leeder after which it was known as Leeder's Hotel, with it becoming a social centre for 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 desserts.
Leeder's Hotel was extended in 1845, by which time it was known as the Freemasons' Tavern and housed the first Masonic Lodge in Western Australia. Following the death of Leeder in 1845, his wife transferred the management to Julian Carr, a merchant who would later become a prominent local politician and Chairman of the Perth City Council from 1861 until 1869. At this time it was known as the Freemasons' 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.