27 February 2024
😡 yet more facadism, of yet another corner pub, this time the 1925 Waterside Hotel on Flinders Street. It’s still going to be a drinking venue, but of completely different character to a pub, with a central courtyard and rising floors of perhaps private bars /dining rooms in one corner, all with green edged balconies, which is nice, but ….. The 2020 CBD heritage guidelines say that the ‘front of principle portion’ should be retained, which has immediately been misinterpreted as if it ‘looks like’ that much is retained, then it’s ok. And in this case right behind the facades will just be narrow balconies, so you’ll look through the windows from the street into more or less open space, so being just facades will actually be quite obvious. There wasnt a lot of notable stuff inside, though possibly including the bar itself, now gone, and a range of doors, stairs, cornices, separate rooms etc, clearly showing it was an old building. Which it wont be very soon, it’ll just be two walls. The Waterside famously opened at 6 for dock workers. Interiors from their FB page, old photo 1960s @cityofmelbourne collection.
Photo sent in by an acquaintance August 2024
Storey of Melbourne 
I used to drink occasionally at the Waterside in the early 1970s. Being an early opening hotel it was a place you could go for a heartstarter on the way to work after a night on the tiles. At the time it was a fairly rough establishment- tiled walls and brown linoleum floors with the cash register sitting on the bar with a barbed wire enclosure around it.
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