Hotel Australia
Victoria, Australia
The Hotel Australia was a former hotel in Melbourne, Australia. The hotel was built in 1939 on the site of the former Cafe Australia (which had opened in 1916), and was demolished in 1989. Designed by Leslie M. Perrott Senior, the Hotel Australia was a 12-storey building with 94 rooms, numerous private dining and function rooms, and was the most prestigious hotel in Melbourne in its day. The hotel included two small air-conditioned cinemas, a restaurant and bar in the basement, and a through-block shopping arcade on the ground floor with 41 shops, which was touted as the largest in Australia, known as the Australia Arcade. Many of the bars within the new hotel quickly became popular meeting places for homosexual men, particularly the first floor cocktail bar and the basement public bar, which from 1970-80 became the Woolshed. The former hotel site is now occupied by a Novotel hotel and the 260 Collins arcade.
Hotel data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).