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39
Elsternwick Hotel
Elsternwick Hotel, 2004
Beyond the St Kilda Hill, travelling south on
the Arthur’s Seat Road, as the track to Point Nepean was then known, the next
rising ground around the bay is Elwood. From the 1840s,
Elsternwick Hotel, the earliest (central) part
likely to have been built in 1854 or 1855, is one of the earliest in suburban
It is thought that the designer of the earliest section of Elsternwick Hotel was Robert Russell (1808-1900). Certainly a copy of a design drawing of this hotel by Russell done in 1875, is held by the hotel. In Russell’s drawing, the hotel stands isolated in remnant bush with a swampy foreground. It is two-storied with three bays and a hipped roof in a Colonial Regency manner and interesting to compare to the earliest section of the Grosvenor (two-storied, four bays and a splayed corner, with cornice and parapet) which is slightly grander for its later late. Melbourne’s other earliest architects with Russell, were Samuel Jackson (1807-76) whose own house, Wattle House, (1850, 23) survives in Jackson Street, St Kilda and John Gill (c1797-1866) whose Barham House is concealed within Eildon (24).
Russell’s firm Russell,
Russell was posted here as senior Assistant
Surveyor. He carried out a topographic survey of the site of
In private practice, Russell surveyed Port
Albert and
In 1856, Russell and his family returned to
Thomas McCombie,
journalist, merchant and politician and Robert Keys were granted the land on
which the Elsternwick Hotel was built in July 1854, for £346. 1854 is on the
parapet over the corner. McCombie wrote the ‘now
forgotten’ novel Arabin, the first to
describe the settlement at Port Phillip, in 1845. He owned the Port Phillip
Gazette newspaper,
John Fleming was McCombie
and Keys’ first licensee. In 1858, McCombie bought
Key’s share when the second licensee became Henry Figsby
Young (Senior) (9). Young, was the father of (and of the same name as)
Henry Figsby Young, Junior who was the Young of
Young and
In 1869 McCombie died and it is mischievous to speculate that Young may have relaxed his management practices: in 1871 he was fine 40 shillings for Sunday trading, during the Christmas rush, it was reported in the Argus newspaper. This did not deter Young from buying the hotel from Mc Combie’s estate in 1872, three years before his son took on the licence for Young & Jackson’s, and held it at least until the mid 1890s. In 1878, he installed Chas Beasely as licensee and in rapid succession, A.G.M. Burden (1882), Charles Cannon (1883-89), Andrew Oastler (1890-91) and L. Oastler (1895).
In 1881, Young added six rooms to the
Elsternwick and in 1890-91 he built the elaborate Boom style corner section,
probably also the rear single-storied billiards room, with its splendid
timber-framed roof and the arcaded facade to the earliest section. The
architects for these late nineteenth century works are not known. In 1926,
Chris A. Cowper, Murphy & Applesford were architects
for major internal alterations and in 1930, P.J. O’Connor designed further
works. In 1934, the billiard room was extended northwards in historicist style,
as a bottle shop on
In 1938, Robert H. McIntyre, prolific hotel
architect, designed alterations and additions to the hotel. McIntyre was the
father of Peter McIntyre, Emeritus Professor of Architecture at the
Note:
Neither the National Trust, nor Heritage
References
City of
City of
de
Serville, Paul. Port Phillip Gentleman and Good
Society in
Farrow, Fergus.
‘Thomas McCombie (1819-1869)’;
in Douglas Pike (Ed). Australian Dictionary of
Biography.
Goad, Philip.
Lewis, Miles.
Suburban Backlash. The Battle for the
World’s Most Liveable City.
Bloomings Books Hawthorn,
Lewis, Miles.
(Architects’ Index).
Architectural Survey. Final Report.
McCabe, Thomas. Arabin. 1845 (novel).
Peterson,
Richard. The Great 1888 Pub Crawl.
National Trust of
R.V. Cole
Collection of Hotel Records.
La Trobe Collection. State
Library of
Robert Russell Papers, La Trobe Library.
Tibbits,
George & Roenfeldt, Angela.
Port Phillip Colonial 1801-1851. Early
The Argus,
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