The Great Northern Hotel was built on a site opposite Newcastle terminus train station at 'the top of town' (cnr Scott & Watt Streets) in 1863 (historic images below from here) and attracted weary travellers from Sydney looking for meals and lodging close to all the main attractions.
Along Scott St, 1906.
Another incarnation
And with awning, circa 1914
During the early to mid-twentieth century Newcastle's CBD was a bustling metropolis savouring wealth from coal and steel industries and local production for everything from electric light bulbs to hosiery.
Workers lined ten-deep on the pavement to catch one of the many trams* or buses queued along Hunter Street for the commute back home to the outer suburbs. On Saturdays the streets were thick with dapper shoppers and day-trippers looking for a way to spend their hard-earned cash.
Shoppers line for buses outside Scott's Department Store
on Hunter Street in December 1952 image from here.
on Hunter Street in December 1952 image from here.
New plans were developed for the hotel in 1937 by Rudder & Grout Architects and Engineers for brewers Tooth and Co. Rudder & Grout where also responsible for North Sydney Olympic Swimming Pool and the Qantas Building at Chifley Square in Sydney. It was Tooth's biggest hotel in their group at the time. Building was conducted by a local firm, Paynter & Dixon Ltd, and was completed in January 1938. Designed as a fashionable meeting place with no expense spared, all manner of luminaries bedded here including various Prime Ministers.
An advertisement for The Great Northern
from Wilson's Rail, Road and Sea Guide to the North Coast (c.1930).
Note that The Great Northern was once the 'largest hotel outside of Sydney'.
from Wilson's Rail, Road and Sea Guide to the North Coast (c.1930).
Note that The Great Northern was once the 'largest hotel outside of Sydney'.
The Great Northern Hotel in the 1940s (building to left). Image from here.
The hotel in the 1950s.
The east and west wings were raised one level to be the same height as the central wing in the 1950s. You can see the difference in the colour of the brickwork of the central and western wings in the more recent image below.
pic by Siobhan Curran
Its more recent history is one that's repeated up and down the streets of Newcastle's CBD - a grand old dame of a building that's seen much better days. Having suffered decades of neglect as local industries slowed and died off and shoppers discovered all the conveniences of suburban malls, the death knell sounded in 1989 by way of a the earthquake which caused destruction for many buildings in the CBD. It was closed for approximately fifteen years.
Thankfully much of its integrity remained and The Great Northern Hotel is now listed on the NSW Heritage Register. New owners are undertaking what looks to be an slow but sympathetic restoration with the street-level bar and bistro reopened in January 2010.
Ohhh, look at the variety of nice ice cold beer on tap.
The 96 hotel rooms, amenities and function halls in the upper levels are still be to restored as can been seen n the below pictures (from the Hotel's Facebook page). They remind me of a similar fate of some of the buildings in the city of Detroit. They too once had a booming (automotive) industry, but when it went bust so too did all the infrastructure, including people, that supported it.
I wish the owners all the luck in the world to turn this beauty around.
89 Scott Street Newcastle
02 4927 57 28
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