Hides Hotel, Historical hotel in Cairns, Australia

Hides Hotel is a three-storey rendered reinforced concrete building on the corner of Lake and Shields Streets, designed by Sydenham Stanley Oxenham and built in 1928 by Michael Thomas Garvey. A wide timber verandah with batten balustrade runs along the first floor of both street frontages, and the parapet of the Lake Street elevation carries the words HIDES CAIRNS HOTEL. The hipped corrugated iron roof is hidden behind a parapet and surrounds a central light shaft serving the two upper floors.

The present Hides Hotel was designed by Cairns architect Sydenham Stanley Oxenham and built in 1928 by contractor Michael Thomas Garvey for the O'Hara family, with its Shields Street section completed around 1936. It replaced the earlier 1885 timber Cairns Hotel, which stood next door and operated with the new building for nearly four decades until its demolition in 1967. The reinforced concrete structure was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.

The hotel's name comes from publican George Parker Hides, who took over the Cairns Hotel licence in 1888; his widow Elizabeth Moir Hides kept it for years and bought the site in 1899. In November 1885 meetings to found a Cairns School of Arts and a Masonic Lodge were held in the earlier hotel, and the Cairns Chamber of Commerce held its inaugural meeting there on 13 May 1886.

The hotel is located in Cairns' downtown area, just a short walk from shops and restaurants. It is easy to explore on foot, and the nearest bus stop is easy to find if you want to use public transportation.

The 1928 building was one of only two three-storeyed structures in Cairns, the other being Boland's store at Lake and Spence Streets. Its original plan called for a 120-foot frontage on Shields Street, but only 87 feet were built; the rest followed around 1936.