Wooley: Let’s raise a glass to the demolition of an eyesore

When it goes, I doubt the Prince of Wales pub – the most cropped out building in the country – will be long missed, reasons Charles Wooley.

The Prince of Wales Hotel, in Battery Point, which is set to be demolished and replaced with a new apartment complex. Picture: Supplied

This week I will avoid expressing delight about Kamala Harris wiping the floor with crazy Donald Trump. Nor will I allude to the state budget and the ‘Fergonomics’ of deficit spending.

We live in tempestuous times and rather than throw petrol on the fire I will follow Kamala’s injunction and seek “what unites rather than divides us”.

Today I have an issue over which even Nipalunatics are unlikely to disagree.

Surely not even the bloke who designed it should object to my supporting the tearing down of that terrible Battery Point eyesore, the Prince of Wales Hotel. It is a blight on the otherwise lovely Hampden Rd streetscape.

Hampden Rd is one of the most pleasing urban vistas in Australia and whenever I showed it off on national television my mainland cameramen loved it, but always with the same qualification: “What is that dreadful red brick shithouse doing here? Charlie, can you stand here as if looking at the scenery and I will use you to block it out.”

I have been used many times as a foil for that awful edifice.

Perhaps my greatest contribution to Australian television journalism was to block out the POW, allowing the camera to capture the delights of historical Battery Point and the mountain beyond.

A view that is otherwise foully sullied by our worst building.

The Prince of Wales Hotel, in Battery Point, which is set to be demolished and replaced with a new apartment complex. Picture: Chris Kidd

I went there last week and watched tourists snapping shots of the Georgian streetscape. The visitors crossed the road, crouched awkwardly to frame out that hideous blot on the landscape. I reckon the unlovely POW pub is the most photographically cropped-out building in Australia.

The sooner the Hobart City Council approves its removal the better. I doubt anyone will lament the passing even though it is a very well run and commodious pub.

I’ve had a beer or two there and on its threshold it always occurs to me that all who enter must abandon every aesthetic sense in exchange for the taste of a well-served schooner.

Fortunately, after a few desensitising beers you don’t much notice the horror on the way out.

Still, I do wonder if some pedantic architectural historian might emerge to testify: “This building should be retained as a splendid example of 1960s architectural brutalism. It is a magnificent triumph of economy over style and marks the beginning of an era where buildings are designed by accountants rather than architects.”

Such a critic might make the half-reasonable point that the POW should be retained as a future warning against all unbridled development.

An artist's impression of an apartment development proposed for the site of the current Prince of Wales Hotel, in Hampden Rd, Battery Point. Picture: Supplied

The lovely old 1843 hotel was demolished in 1967 as part of a redevelopment that aimed to see a highway replace most of the houses in Arthur Circus. The grand plan to widen Hampden Rd would have also removed the houses between Colville St and Waterloo Cr.

There were also plans to remove “the unsightly old sandstone warehouses” of Salamanca.

It was the urban planning equivalent of flooding Lake Pedder. Fortunately it didn’t happen, not because of public outrage but because the commercial economy soured and Hobart slipped back into its normal senescence. Just the way we like it.

Generally, much of our built landscape has been preserved in the amber of poverty. We never had the kind of profligate cash that allowed profiteers to ravage Sydney’s Rocks. Battery Point was nibbled around the edges by the rat-developers, but they never got the whole cheese. Later foreign raiders with no sentimentality for our old colonial sandstone heart continue to advocate inappropriate development. But what chance do they have when even good ideas get thrown out by the Hobart council?

An artist's impression of an apartment development which will include 13 apartments and four townhouses, proposed for the site of the Prince of Wales Hotel, in Hampden Rd, Battery Point. Picture: Supplied

I’m not mentioning the coliseum because this week’s column is determinedly uncontroversial.

Last week, I steeled my precious architectural sensitivities to sit down in his pub with Craig Clifford, one of the four owners of the Prince of Wales. He explained his plans for the site over a couple of beers, for which he paid.

(This is not a declaration of interest on my part but more an observation that had his father, my friend Robert Clifford, opened his wallet I would have been knocked off my stool by a swarm of moths).

“Is this the ugliest building in Battery Point?” I asked.

“What’s your next question?” Craig laughed.

Yes, there was nothing to argue about. It was a short and agreeable interview.

Whatever replaces the POW can only be an improvement.

I don’t especially love the artist’s impression but it’s 100 per cent better than what’s there today.

The sooner the Hobart City Council approves the removal of the Prince of Wales Hotel in Battery Point, the better, according to Charles Wooley. Picture: Chris Kidd

And how rarely can you say that in this town?

The new complex featuring 13 apartments and four townhouses as well as a basement car park, a bar, a cafe and a retail space which is being proposed, doesn’t seem inappropriate for a high population density suburb. And certainly, Hobart needs more new housing than it needs ugly old pubs.

There is no way we can recreate the 1843 Prince of Wales at 55 Hampden Rd. The old pub name might be lost along with so many now long-forgotten great names like The Help Me Through the World Inn, The Bird in Hand, The Labour in Vain and the Jolly Hatters.

There were almost 200 colourful public houses in Hobart in 1855. Today there are about 40, and when the ugly red brick facade of the current POW disappears I doubt that one less will be much missed nor long lamented.

Close by there’s the consolation of the Shipwrights Arms and the many pubs of old Salamanca.

Fear not tipplers. Even without that Hampden Rd eyesore you are still never far from a beer in old Hobart Town.

Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist