the george hotel - harry b gibbs

The George Hotel. St Kilda Victoria, Australia.

Here, I discuss specifically the four-story corner structure, a landmark of the suburb of St. Kilda in Melbourne, Victoria. 

Hotels, often the domain of designers and architects that have been given a certain element of 'free reign' or, perhaps a little more artistic license than can often be witnessed in the finished products that are the more mundane commercial structures such as office blocks and other administrative structures. Hotels are, and always have been places for people to unwind, relax, indulge in gastronomic delights, escape the reality of their own day-to-day. Hotels are buildings that need to be designed in an alluring manner, to be as much of a draw card in many instances, as the food and fare that are sold inside the buildings. In today's diverse society we are used to our food and beverage needs and wants being served from many and varied types of operations from as varied a range of buildings. However, in the 1800's the 'hotel' was the cornerstone of the social-lives of all those affluent enough to enjoy them. Most hotels provided all the social, entertainment, refreshing beverage and accommodation needs to a population local to that particular institution, and it is by this rational and by this design that the legendary George Hotel came to be.

The 1890 construction on the corner of Fitzroy and Gray streets in St Kilda is a facade known not just to today's St Kilda locals, but to a whole generation and more, of people who have been seduced by the new wave of culinary pursuits pedaled by the commercial inhabitants of this building. The flaking white paint, circular turret sporting a single flagpole and the corner entry to what is known today as the Melbourne Wine Room have become not just a significant landmark of a significant Melbourne precinct, but an icon of good times, refinement of design and of an individual who is in many ways responsible for the dining habits of an entire city; Melbourne.

The Harry B Gibbs designed building was completed in 1890, and adjoined the earlier five-story building on Fitzroy street to become what we accept today as the George. Gloriously detailed in a fashion now completely absent from almost all adjoining commercial architecture in the area, the George serves as a time-marker for every significant era in the area's past. In the days when St Kilda was a fashionable sea-side resort town for Melbourne's well-heeled who would arrive by train across the street at the 1857-completed St Kilda Train Station, to the seventies and early eighties before the great hotel was abandoned when it was the host of the 'Crystal Ballroom', the venue for visiting punk rock outfits such as the Sex Pistols. The George has seen many turbulent times as a seedy and often undesirable hang-out for drug-dealers, bikies and other low-life that prompted the cancellation of the hotel's liquor license by Victorian Liquor and Gaming. A sad end to a long life that started as one of the most glamerous and well-appointed hotels in the entire state.

Few buildings, even of the same era in Victoria have the same level of detailing. A detailing that lent elegance and prestige now in its purposefully disheveled state, as it did in the late 1800's when it was brand new. As a design, the lure for me is the detailing. It is a quality that is largely absent from building exteriors today. It is a quality that lends distinction, and cachet like chrome detailing on a car. And having lived in an apartment behind this glorious building, and walked past it nearly every day, visiting often to drink and dine like many others who lived in the area I developed an great appreciation and fascination with it that makes it specially significant to me.

In summary I will add, there were periods in the Hotel's turbulent history when it came close to being knocked down and re-developed. These were the seventies, and the proposed re-design would have dated within 20 years. The George has stood the test of time, consulting architects in the early nineties were wise in retaining the buildings flaking facade, worn like a nod to all the decades of glory and neglect that it had seen like the wrinkles on an old lady's face.

We can thank the late Don Levy Fitzpatrick, a pioneer of hospitality for having the vision to purchase the building in the late eighties, sympathetically renovate it, and establish some of Australia's simplest and best food and beverage concepts within its many cavities, for this great design's life lasting into the new century.

Many designs are altered for the eyes of generation's appreciation, but some designs are so correct that they need not be toyed with. The George Hotel is one of those.