Sydney’s Orient Hotel

Of course on a blog such as this anywhere called the Orient Hotel is going to attract my interest…and so here we are in The Rocks in Sydney at The Orient….

This site was in the original grounds of Sydney’s first hospital complex and later was enclosed by fencing to become a part of the Surgeon General’s residence. In June 1828, the allotment was part of a land grant made. By 1853, the house had become a hotel called the ‘Marine Hotel’, which became the ‘Orient Hotel’ in 1884. The residence erected by Chapman was described in 1845 as being constructed of brick with shingle roof, three storeys high with basement, possessing ‘every convenience’. The original single storey shop at 87 George Street seems to have been a single storey structure, operated as a butchers shop by Chapman until his death in 1858. The shop remained until 1930-31 when Tooth & Co. replaced it with the present Art Nouveau additions to the Orient Hotel. In 1876 the Hotel was sold to Gustave Buckham and renamed ‘Buckham’s Hotel’; then in 1878-82 the ‘May’s Family Hotel’; and in 1882-84 the ‘Pries Family Hotel’ before, in 1884, becoming once again the ‘Orient Hotel’.