Coffee palace


A coffee palace was an often large and elaborate residential hotel that did not serve alcohol, most of which were built in Australia in the late 19th century.
A modest temperance hotel was opened in 1826 by activist Gerrit Smith in his hometown of Peterboro, New York, United States. It was not popular with locals, nor commercially successful.
Temperance hotels were first established in the UK in the 1850s to provide an alcohol-free alternative to corner pubs and residential hotels, and by the 1870s they could be found in every town and city, some quite large and elaborate. In the late 1870s the idea caught on in Australia, where the appellation "coffee palace" was almost universal, and dozens were built in the 1880s and early 1890s, including some of the largest hotels in the country. Due to the depression of the mid-1890s, some became ordinary hotels and others were converted to different uses. The name continued to be applied to smaller residential hotels and guest houses in the early 20th century, until the trend died out. As large old hotels that may never have been a financial success, many, including most of the largest, were eventually demolished.

History

In the 17th and 18th centuries, "coffee houses", which were like taverns, but sold the new beverage of coffee rather than alcohol, became popular in the United Kingdom, but died out by the late 18th century.
Beginning in the early 19th century in the United States, the temperance movement campaigned against the moral, economical and medical effects of overindulgence in alcoholic beverages, a campaign which soon evolved into the promotion of total abstinence. By the early 1830s the temperance movement began in earnest in the United Kingdom, starting in the north, and soon spread all over the country. The movement built or converted its own premises for meetings, entertainment, food and accommodations, with the first "temperance hotel" opening in 1833 in Preston, with 22 across the north and the Midlands by 1835.
Intended as an alternative to the corner pub, they were often about the same size, and just about every town of any size soon had at least one. As well as "temperance hotel", many other names were used such as temperance bar, coffee tavern, coffee rooms, temperance tavern, or just a named hotel that was advertised as a temperance venue. In the 1870s, with an established market, larger and more elaborate temperance hotels began to be built, a trend which continued into the 1880s, and some of these were called a "coffee palace". Examples included the 1872 French Renaissance style Trevelyan Temperance Hotel, Boar Lane, Leeds, and the Cobden Coffee Palace, Corporation Street, Birmingham, built in 1883 in a striking Gothic Revival style.
The Temperance movement in Australia was established shortly after its beginnings in the UK, for instance, the temperance society in Melbourne was formed in 1837. This was followed by the Melbourne Total Abstinence Society in 1842, the Independent Order of Rechabites in 1847, and in 1885 the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Tankard's Temperance Hotel, an alcohol-free residential hotel, was established in the 1850s, in the western end of the city.
In Australia, the same imperative for their construction applied as in the UK, as expressed at a meeting at the Melbourne Temperance Hall in October 1878, to build a place "... as attractive as possible for the working man, should combine every facility for harmless amusement and intellectual enjoyment, with the advantages of a large hotel, the only difference being that coffee should be vended instead of intoxicating liquors". A major point of difference to the UK examples however was that they were built "on a business basis" rather than as a subsidised or not for profit venture. The first "coffee house" companies were founded soon after that meeting in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, and the first to be built, the Collingwood Coffee Palace, opened in Smith Street, Fitzroy in 1879, followed by the grandly ornate Melbourne Coffee Palace in Bourke Street the city in 1882.
Their promotion occurred at a time of great economic growth in Australia, which perhaps combined with the "moral superiority" behind them, led to their rapid popularity and the construction of many often quite large and elaborate "temperance hotels" in the following decade, nearly always called Coffee Palaces. The greatest growth occurred in Melbourne, then in the throes of a "land boom", with land rising steeply in value and large buildings built to capitalise on that value. This coincided with the popularity of what is now called High Victorian architecture, lavish buildings with richly ornamented facades and interiors, usually Renaissance Revival, perhaps combined with Second Empire elements. The coffee palaces were invariably built in this elaborate High Victorian style.
The Scots Presbyterian James Munro, politician and leading Land Boomer, was a champion of the temperance movement in Victoria; in 1886 he formed a company that purchased an already prominent hotel, the Grand on Spring Street built three years previously, and converted it into a temperance hotel, the Grand Coffee Palace, reputedly burning the liquor licence.
The Federal Coffee Palace, built in 1888 on the corner of Collins and King Street in the western end of Melbourne's CBD was the largest hotel built in Australia, and the Grand Coffee Palace at the other end of the city was the second largest in Melbourne, while the Queens Coffee Palace in Carlton was possibly the third. In Sydney the Grand Central Coffee Palace built in 1889 was almost as big the contemporary Metropole and Australia Hotels, but they were the better known and patronised.
The boom lasted a little more than a decade, ending with the banking crisis of 1893, and a severe economic depression. The coffee palaces lost custom to the licensed hotels they were sometimes built to compete with, while others were built for patrons that never came, and so struggled to survive. Some were converted into guest houses or private hotels, while others applied for liquor licences and dropped the "coffee palace" title.
The "coffee palace" title was however taken up in the early 20th century for usually small residential hotels / guest houses, often in resort or country towns, to indicate they were not licensed, but they fell short of the grandeur the name implied.
The larger examples were essentially large Victorian-era hotels with numerous small rooms, and those that had not continued as hotels often became cheap boarding houses by the mid 20th century, especially in the Melbourne suburbs, and a few were demolished from the 1950s-1970s. Many significant examples still survive, though very few still operate as hotels. The most famous survivor is the Hotel Windsor, the renamed Grand Coffee Palace that James Munro had established, which re-gained its liquor licence in 1897, and changed name in 1920, and is Australia's major surviving grand 19th century hotel.

Coffee palaces

Australia

Victoria

Melbourne
  • Collingwood Coffee Palace, 232 Smith Street,. It was named Collingwood despite actually being on the Fitzroy side of the street. Ground level opened in late 1879, the top two floors added by late 1880. In the early 20th century floors were added and it was subsumed into a department store, of which only the facade remains propped atop a supermarket.
  • Prahran Coffee Palace, Chapel Street, Prahran, 1880
  • Victoria Coffee Palace, Collins Street adjacent to the Melbourne Town Hall, 1880. The Collins Street frontage was demolished when the town hall was extended in the 1920s, but the Little Collins Street part, built 1880s and 1920s, survives as the Victoria Hotel
  • Coffee Tavern No 2, 516-518 Flinders Street, 1880. Closed 1897, became a warehouse then offices, then a licensed brothel in 1990.
  • Melbourne Coffee Palace, Bourke Street, 1882, demolished c1970.
  • Richmond Coffee Palace, 1888, Swan Street, Richmond. Closed c1900.
  • St Kilda Coffee Palace, Grey Street, St Kilda, 1883 - recently Coffee Palace Backpackers, and now the Selina Hotel.
  • Grand Coffee Palace, Spring Street, first stage built as a hotel in 1884, became a Coffee Palace in 1886, extended 1888, licence reinstated 1897, renamed the Hotel Windsor) in 1920s.
  • Oriental Coffee Palace, later Gladstone Hotel, Victoria Street, 1888 North Melbourne
  • Albert Park Coffee Palace, later The Biltmore,, 1887.
  • Mentone Coffee Palace,, 1887. Closed 1904, and purchased to become the nucleus of Kilbreda College.
  • South Yarra Coffee Palace, cnr Toorak Road and Claremont Street, 1887 now the Hotel Claremont Guesthouse.
  • Federal Coffee Palace, Corner of Collins and King Streets, Melbourne, 1888, demolished 1972.
  • Queen's Coffee Palace, 1 Rathdowne Street,, 1888, demolished c1970
  • West Melbourne Coffee Palace, Victoria Street, probably on the corner of Roden Street,, c1888 demolished.
  • Sandringham Coffee Palace, "adjoining railway station", 1889, known by 1894 as Sandringham House,, demolished..
  • Hawthorn Coffee Palace, Burwood Road near Glenferrie Road, c1890 demolished.
  • McCaughans Coffee Palace, Spencer Street, Melbourne, 1891, now Great Southern Hotel
  • Newport Coffee Palace, 24 Newcastle Street, Newport, 1891 Became a guest house in the 1920s, converted to apartments in the later 20th century.
  • Grand Coffee Palace, Mornington, 1889. Converted to Grand Hotel 1892.
    Ballarat
  • Andrew's Coffee Palace, Armstrong Street
  • Reid's Coffee Palace,, verandah late 1890s now Reid's Guest House.
    Bendigo
  • Sandhurst Coffee Palace
  • Central Coffee Palace
    Bellarine Peninsula
  • Barwon Heads Coffee Palace, facing mouth of Barwon River, 1889, renamed Mt Colite Hotel, destroyed by fire 1928, site now Barwon Heads Hotel
  • Ocean Grove Coffee Palace, later Green Gables and The Chalet, 1888, demolished late 1960s
  • Grand Hotel, 1881, now Vue Grand, sometimes described as a coffee palace.
  • Sea View Coffee Palace, cnr Hesse and Stokes Streets, described as a Coffee Palace from 1899, now Sea View Guest House.
  • Federal Coffee Palace, Hesse Street, Queenscliff, location and date uncertain