Observer Hotel

About

Observer Hotel is a heritage-listed hotel at 69 George Street, in the inner city Sydney suburb of The Rocks in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by Halligan & Wilton and built from 1908 to 1909. The property is owned by Property NSW, an agency of the Government of New South Wales. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 10 May 2002.

The Observer Hotel is built on the west side of George Street North on land which was, from 1788, part of the grounds of the prefabricated, temporary hospital. Although the site of the hotel is within the area occupied by the temporary hospital complex, no buildings are shown on either Hunter's initial survey or James Meehan 's 1807 survey. In 1795 the land upon which the Observer Hotel was later to be constructed was leased to William Balmain. Balmain left the colony in 1801 but the next official lease of the land was not until 1810 when it was leased to William Gaudry who may have erected a building on the site. Gaudry had married the daughter of Henry Kable, a Sydney entrepreneur, and was part owner of the schooner Geordy with Henry Kable junior, as well as acting as an auctioneer and agent for his father-in-law. Gaudry's main property appears to have been near that of the Kables at Minto. The lease of the land in The Rocks was transferred to John Plummer in 1820. By 1824 Plummer was bankrupt and the lease was once again transferred, this time to James Johnston.

A substantial two-storey house with a verandah, stables and stores was constructed on the site by the 1820s. This was the town residence of the Crown Solicitor Frederick Garling. The Garling family emigrated from London in 1815. Frederick Garling Jr., a noted maritime artist, painted a series of views of Sydney Harbour c. 1839, one of which included his family residence which had recently been sold.

In the early 1830s an attempt was made to formalise the leases but this grant was not formalised until October 1838, by which time the lot had been transferred to William Carr and George John Rodgers. Frederick Garling senior is likely to have been making plans to retire; his retirement was formally approved by the Governor in 1839. In addition to his townhouse Garling had been granted 486 hectares (1,200 acres) by Governor Macquarie in 1819.

Carr and Rodger's grant was then transferred to Frederick Wright Unwin, who was the claimant of the lot to the south. Unwin subdivided the property into a series of lots and c. 1845 erected the substantial sandstone stores just south of the site that survive today. A rear lane was created (now Kendall Lane). Garling's house is believed to have been demolished in 1844, shortly before the Waterman's Arms were constructed. Part of the house was revealed during archaeological excavations in the early 1990s.

By 1810 there were 75 "licensed houses" in NSW, a number of which were located "on the Rocks", particularly fronting George Street North and in nearby Millers Point. Governor Macquarie soon restricted the number of licenses issued, one of which was obtained by Samuel Terry. It is partly due to the commercial subdivision of the lots claimed by Samuel Terry and Frederick Unwin and partly due to the proximity to the port and the bonded customs warehouses that George Street North developed a concentration of small public houses. Terry, a successful businessman, claimed allotments in The Rocks in the early 1830s which were finally granted in 1841. Running a hotel would appear to have been a lucrative business, the Observer Tavern was built in 1848 for Robert White Moore, the lessee of the original Fortune of War Hotel from 1840-46.

In the 1840s the block between Argyle Street and Mill Lane developed the character that it largely retains today. The building stock is predominantly Colonial Georgian commercial buildings. The pattern of use also remains similar; public houses interspersed with shops. Corner sites were favoured for public houses. The block still retains this pattern of development with the Orient Hotel on the southern corner and the Observer Hotel (which replaced the Waterman's Arms and the original Observer Hotel) on the northern corner.

The Observer Tavern, as it was originally known, was built in 1848 for Robert White Moore who had purchased Lot 10 of Frederick Unwin's subdivision the year before. The adjacent Waterman's Arms having been built in 1844. The present Observer Hotel, built on a more substantial site than the original, dates from 1908–09 and straddles the sites of both the Waterman's Arms and the Observer Tavern. The Waterman's Arms reflects the numerous watermen who operated row boats on Sydney Harbour, the forerunner of the water taxi and the men may have gathered there waiting for a commission. In Sydney, before bridges were constructed, the easiest way to get to the lower North Shore was by rowboat and later by ferry. The Waterman's Arms was constructed of sandstone and is a more substantial building than the brick hotel constructed adjacent to it in 1848. Adjacent was yet another public house, almost identical in character to the Observer Tavern. The Moore family retained the ownership of the Waterman's Arms until the 1901 resumption.

The two-storey six roomed building constructed as the Observer Tavern for Moore was built of brick walls with timber floors and a shingle roof. Up until 1852 the building was rated as a house rather than a public house. By 1851 a kitchen had been added to the roof, and the hotel is recorded as containing eight rooms. The origin of the name Observer Tavern is unknown, however the first stage of the Sydney Observatory on Observatory Hill, the time ball, was also built in 1848. It is not a common name for a public house. The first observatory in the Australian colonies had been erected on Dawes Point by William Dawes in 1788.

J. M. Forde records John Speerin was the publican in the 1850s, and that the hotel was simply "within a door". The Observer was later operated by John Ferguson, with the adjacent P & O Hotel [Pacific and Orient] operated by his wife Mary. The photographs of the Observer Tavern in the SCC Demolition Books shows a sign reading "Fergusons" on the parapet, and the wording "Observer Tavern" painted on the brickwork below. The Fergusons continued to be the publicans until 1925.

The Observer Tavern was for some years used as an unofficial coroner's court, before the construction of the Coroner's Court and Morgue in 1906. It was common practice in NSW to hold coronial inquests in public houses, although by law if there was a morgue or police station within one mile, it had to be used in preference. In 1856 a panel of jurors requested that the ventilation in the Circular Quay Dead House be improved. The use of the adjacent hotel was probably due to the stench of the bodies in an era when refrigerated morgues were unknown.

Redevelopment of the 'new' Observer Hotel

The Observer Tavern and the new Coroner's Court were both part of the extensive urban renewal in George Street North undertaken following the 1900 land resumptions. A series of plans survives that records the owners of the premises resumed. The former Waterman's Arms was owned by the Union Bank of Australia, the Observer Tavern was the estate of Arthur Malcolm Moore. The Sydney City Council demolition photographs show that a sandstone building on the corner of Mill Lane (No. 67 George Street North) was demolished before the Observer Tavern; and correspondence between F. Robertson and the Town Clerk survives from mid-1902. A record plan was prepared in December 1901 which indicates that the Waterman's Arms was one of the many substandard buildings identified for demolition by the Resumed Properties Branch. The demolition also allowed for the straightening and widening of Mill Lane, and the regularisation of the block fronting George Street North.

In 1908 J. M. Forde reported in The Truth that:

The government has recently sold the Observer Tavern, with thirty feet frontage and very little depth, an old house, for 3,000 pounds, or one hundred pounds per foot. The house has for ages been a sort of Coroner's Court, where short inquests were held. It will still be a sort of appendage to coronial quests, as the new morgue and court are opposite. Weeping friends can wet eye and whistle while awaiting coronial pleasure.

Plans for the new "Observer Tavern Hotel" prepared by Halligan and Wilton on behalf of Tooth and Co. brewery were submitted to the Sydney City Council in March 1908. The Building Application plans no longer survive, however the watercoloured version of the plans submitted to the licensing board is amongst the hotel plans held at State Records, as are some of the other George Street North hotels.

The plans for the new hotel were approved in May 1908. The ground floor included a bar, two parlours (one of which was for the residents), a dining room, pantry, kitchen, laundry, spirit store. A WC and also a large yard and a public urinal were accessible from Mill Lane. The dining room was also only accessible from the private entry and there was originally no connection into the public bar which fronted George Street North. Upstairs were a series of bedrooms, a sitting room, bathroom, WC and a linen cupboard.

The Tooth's Yellow Card for the Observer Hotel records that the site, allotment 3 of Section of the Observatory Hill lands, was acquired by Tooth & Co. in January 1909 and they retained the premises until the land was once again resumed, this time by the Sydney Cove Redevelopment Authority (SCRA), in December 1977. The approval to build a hotel had been obtained from the Liquor Licensing Board before the land transfer was formalised. The Fergusons continued to operate the public house once the new building had been completed. The date of re-opening of the Observer Hotel has not been determined, nor the builder identified. John Alexander Ferguson remained the publican until at least 1915, Mrs Victoria Elizabeth Ferguson taking over in 1923.

In June 1920 Tooth's architect Mr. J. G. Dalzeil prepared a report noting that the following works to the site and building of the Observer Hotel were required:

- Renovate private entrance, stair hall; staircase walls, ceilings and woodwork