How ban on booze built Melbourne’s grand coffee palaces
A social movement to wean Melburnians off alcohol started the city’s love affair with coffee more than a century ago.
Victoria
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Melbourne is the undisputed coffee capital of the nation with an international reputation, but how many people know that the caffeine culture dates to the 19th century?
It all started with the so-called coffee palaces – grand, ornate buildings that graced Melbourne’s streets and even regional areas after the gold rush.
State Library Victoria curator Linda Short said the coffee palaces were a creation of the temperance movement that spread from 19th century USA and UK to Australia.
“It was a social and political movement that was encouraging people to reduce their alcohol consumption intake, or stop drinking it altogether, and to drink coffee instead,” she said.
“Its hey day was in the 1880s after the gold rush.”
“Hence why the coffee palaces look so opulent and extravagant, there was a lot of money around to create these very opulent buildings.”
While not originally a coffee palace, the Windsor Hotel in Spring St was converted to one for about 11 years in the late 1800s.
But the most famous one for Melburnians of that era was the Federal Coffee Palace on the corner of King and Collins streets.
“It had 500 rooms for sitting, reading, smoking and sleeping. And at the time the largest dining hall in the country,” Ms Short said.
“It was very popular with locals and tourists, in fact so popular that they published a visitor guide, and we’re lucky to have a copy of that in our collection.”
“It has this amazing fold-out map which is an aerial view of Melbourne.”
Controversially, the building, which became the Federal Hotel, was demolished in 1973 and replaced with an office tower.
“It’s on the list as one of the buildings that Melbourne most regrets demolishing,” Ms Short said.
The library’s video also features architectural drawings of the People’s Coffee Palace – a project set for the corner of Spencer and Flinders streets that was never realised due to the 1890s economic crash.
By the turn of the century, the coffee palace movement was just about dead, with buildings relicensed as hotels.
Ms Short said the library’s online coffee exhibition includes the KeepCup, a local re-usable cup invention that’s now found in 65 countries.
“The exhibition looks at the rise of coffee culture in Melbourne, and the influence of coffee on local innovation,” she said.
“It seems far-fetched to think of coffee as an agent of change, but it has been a vehicle for social change at different points in Victoria’s history,” she said.
slv.vic.gov.au/search-discover/galleries/coffee
VICTORIA’S GRAND COFFEE HOUSES
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