Established in 1854
as a wayside inn, the Elsternwick Hotel was a favourite watering hole of
bushrangers and robbers because of its relative isolation on the track from
Melbourne to the Mornington
Peninsula. Both the hotel and its immediate
surrounds were notorious for this criminal element. Thomas Bent was once held
up and tied to the red gum opposite the hotel.Thomas McCombie and Robert Keys were granted the land on which the
Elsternwick Hotel was built in July 1854, the year that remains on the parapet
over the corner.
John Fleming was the first licensee of the
Elsternwick Hotel.In 1858, McCombie
bought Keys’s share when the second licensee became Henry Figsby Young, who
purchased the controversial painting of Chloe.His son Henry Figsby Young jnr was the ‘Young’ of Young and Jackson’s Hotel on the
corner of Swanston and Flinders Street, where the
painting now resides.After Today McCombie’s death in 1869, Figsby Young snr bought the hotel from
McCombie’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.From 1878, he installed a variety of
licensees.
The first portion, built in 1854, is the oldest
continuously trading hotel building in St Kilda. It is thought that the
designer of the earliest section of the Elsternwick Hotel was Robert Russell
(1808-1900).A copy of a design drawing
by Russell completed in 1875, is held by the hotel.The additional features, designed by James
Wood, date back to 1889. These include the additions of a parapet; a double
level arcaded first floor at the front (the lower level has been subsequently
enclosed); a two-storey Boom-Style Italianate corner section to the south; and
a billiard room to the north. The architects for these late nineteenth century
works are not known.
In 1926, architects Chris A Cowper and Murphy &
Appleford designed the renovations. PJ O’Connor in 1930 and Robert H McIntyre
in 1938 designed further alterations and additions. In 1972, the hotel was
again extensively renovated and extended. The Victoria Bitter neon sign erected
in 1951, and located on the corner section, is also a prominent local landmark
and was registered with the hotel by the National Trust at local level in
December 1996.
