Port Adelaide - Hotels

Hotels

Port Adelaide is known for its well preserved 19th-century pubs and hotels, reflecting the area's maritime history in catering to the sailors of trading ships. The earliest recorded was the Port Hotel. It opened in 1838, two years before the port was officially declared. Three years later the First Commercial Inn opened. It has the longest licensing history in the suburb, though discontinuous; It did not trade for 12 years following a fire in 1857.

The British hotel is the longest continually licensed. It opened 1847 as a single storey building, and was rebuilt with two stories in 1876 for then owner Henry Ayers. The South Australian Brewing Company acquired it in 1937. It was known from c. 1907–1952 as "McGraths British Hotel".

Dockside Tavern is one of the few Late Victorian style buildings remaining in the Port. It was opened as the Britannia Hotel in 1850 then was rebuilt on site in 1898, in contemporary style. It was renamed as the Dockside Tavern in 2002. The Golden Port Tavern is on the corner of Vincent and Robe streets. On this site the Carpenters' Arms Tavern opened in late 1850. The Arms was burnt down in 1865 and was replaced with the current hotel, then known as The Globe. The hotel's name was changed to the current one in 1981.

Black Diamond Square—named after the Black Diamond Hotel—is the main intersection of Port Adelaide, at the end of Commercial Road. The hotel was designed by Adelaide architect William Wier. It opened as the White Horse Cellars Inn in 1851, with an integral 600 seat theatre. Parts of the building were used for an early freemason hall, library and the Port Adelaide Institute. It was renamed as the Family Hotel in 1876, then as the Black Diamond Hotel c. 1878. This last name came from the Black Diamond Line shipping company. From 1866–1883 Cannon brand beer was brewed in the hotel. The building was converted to retail shops in 1884 and the Central hotel erected on southern side.

Port Dock Brewery hotel won business awards as best hotel and restaurant in 2001. It was built in 1855 and opened as the Dock Hotel. The current building structure results from an 1883 rebuild, with stone from Dry Creek near Yatala Labour Prison. The Hotel lost its licence in 1909, after a 1906 Opinion Vote. The building was renovated, part of it converted into a small brewery, and reopened as a hotel in 1986. Railway Hotel opened in 1856 opposite the new Port Adelaide railway station, a month before the line to Adelaide was opened. The hotel retains many original features including leadlight windows and an 1890s glass fanlight.

Two six-room houses were built on the corner of Cannon Street and Church Place in 1873. They were converted into a single building and opened as the Kent Hotel in 1875. The building's exterior was restyled in Art Deco fashion in the 1940s and the interior of the hotel completely renovated in the 1990s. It is now known as the Port Anchor Hotel.

Brunwick Pier Hotel was on the corner of Vincent and Robe Streets. It opened 1878 in what had been a butcher's shop. The hotel lost its licence in 1909, along with other hotels, after an opinion poll result in a reduction of the number of licences. After this the building was used as a furniture shop and a butcher's shop. During the 1920s it became a pharmacy specialising in photographic materials and "Kirby's Calcarea Teething Powders"; Medical suites were leased upstairs. It was bought by Birks Chemists in 1946, and remained a pharmacy until 1996; from then to at least 2001 the building was vacant.

On the corner of Dale street is a building that was opened by the Port Adelaide Market Company in 1879, divided into shops, offices and stalls. Part of the building was later adapted to make a seventeen-room hotel, the Newmarket. Colac Hotel, on Ocean Steamer's Road, opened in 1881. It was built opposite the then No. 1 Dock, alongside the 1879 extension to the South Australian Company basin. The hotel has had strong ties to both the Australian Labor Party and the union movement. Both former Prime Minister Bob Hawke and local Member of Parliament Mick Young used to talk to workers at the pub. Mick Young owned the pub from 1988–1990 and as of 2002 it was owned by the Labor Party.

From 1838 to 1906, sixty differently named hotels had been run on thirty-eight different sites within Port Adelaide. A local opinion poll was held in Port Adelaide and other Adelaide districts in February 1906, on the subject of liquor licensing. Port Adelaide voters supported the Temperance Party's platform, reducing the number of licences by a third. Fifteen hotels and three wine licences expired on 25 March 1909 and were not renewed.