Exchange Hotel, Laidley, Heritage-listed hotel in Laidley, Australia
The Exchange Hotel is a two-storeyed brick building at 134–138 Patrick Street in Laidley, designed by Eaton & Bates and finished in late 1902. Its ground floor held the hotel's public rooms and, from completion, a branch office of the Royal Bank of Queensland; guest rooms were upstairs. The National Bank kept an office in the building until 1956.
The building was constructed in 1902 by architects Eaton & Bates for publicans Julius and Hansine Jocumsen, replacing an earlier wooden hotel dating from 1876. After completion, the ground floor rooms were shared with the Royal Bank of Queensland for its offices until the mid-twentieth century.
The hotel's name carried over from the first Exchange Hotel, a single-storeyed timber building erected around 1876 for farmer and storekeeper Frederick Chambers, one of the earliest buildings in the town that grew around the railway station. Publican William Bergland took a ten-year lease from 1 December 1901, paying £1,100 for the goodwill and furniture.
The hotel stands at 134–138 Patrick Street, in the block of the town centre near the railway line. The two-storey facade with its overhanging eaves marks the entrance from the street. Public rooms are on the ground floor and guest rooms above, so the split between bar and lodging is easy to read.
The Royal Bank of Queensland opened a Laidley branch around 1890 and moved into the new hotel's ground floor when it was finished in late 1902. The office passed through mergers to the Bank of Queensland in 1917 and the National Bank of Australasia in 1922, which kept its branch there until 1956.
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