Port Office Hotel, Heritage hotel in Brisbane City, Australia.
The Port Office Hotel is a two-storey rendered brick building on the corner of Edward and Margaret Streets, with a corrugated iron roof. The brickwork is scribed to imitate stonework, with bays separated by rendered quoins and stone sills to several windows. A cantilevered awning dominates the street facades, and leadlight windows remain in some ground-floor openings.
The building opened in 1864 as the Shamrock Hotel before undergoing complete reconstruction in 1876 under architect James Cowlishaw. This rebuilding created the structure that stands at the site today.
The hotel's name comes from the nearby Port Office, adopted around 1909 when licensee John Chillan Cutbush took over. Earlier it was the Shamrock Hotel, opened on this site in May 1864. Its 1888 layout included public and private bars, a clubroom, fifteen bedrooms and a drawing room, and it drew workers from the shipping and riverside businesses.
The hotel stands at the corner of Edward and Margaret Streets in Brisbane's central business district, near the Port Office and Naval Offices. Its low-lying site has been sandbagged during floods, including in 2011, so check conditions after heavy rain. The cantilevered awning over the street facades gives shelter along the footpath.
The hotel stands on low-lying ground, so during the 2011 Brisbane floods it was sandbagged to keep water out. It had already been flooded in 1893 and again in 1974, and the 1955 refurbishment by architect Francis Leo Cullen stripped away its verandahs, lacework, canopies and chimneystacks.
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