23 November 2018:

Didn’t know this large elaborate Victorian thing in #ToorakRoad was #CoffeePalace, until I edited the Wikipedia article on Coffee Palaces (like you do) where it’s clear the Melbourne was the epicentre for the movement to build residential hotels that didn’t serve alcohol (the most visible result of the #temperance movement, hoping to draw punters away from normal hotels)- so many and so elaborate ! – this one was built in 1887 as the #SouthYarraCoffeePalace (architects ‘Messers Packer and McMullen’), and there was a Prahran Coffee Palace too round the corner on Chapel Street, not sure where.

This one is oddly non-symmetrical, but never mind, most importantly looks intact inside, great columned hall and stair, now the Claremont Hotel, anyone been in ? Interiors from their website. Was built with 70 rooms, with a bar (sarsaparilla?), smoking room, dining room and billiard hall on the first floor, and it was “… fitted with all modern conveniences including hot and cold water to sinks and baths, electric bells and speaking tubes” ! The coffee palace movement died out pretty quick when the boom bust in the 1890s and they couldn’t compete with alcohol serving hotels, especially in the suburbs – I mean how many people would have wanted an #hotel room here anyway ?

28 March 2024:

Sad to report via @demolishing_melbourne that this corner coffee palace has been facaded, so the elegant lobby corridor and timber stair all gone. I’d have preferred to keep the front section intact and lose the rear wings rather than keep just one wall of the rear wing, which will just look silly. Another case where the Council should have listed the interior, but few Councils have listed any.

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