Braidwood Hotel Facade

The pink rendered facade of Braidwood Hotel sits at 180 Wallace Street, its timber balcony with cross-braced railings spanning the full width above a verandah with a cream door. A chalkboard mounted to the wall reads "Braidwood Hotel, State of Origin Tonight, Go NSW." Outdoor chairs and a bench rest on a stone base. The lettering and coloured diamond emblem across the upper wall identify the building without ambiguity. The hotel was built in 1859 during the Gold Rush-era expansion of Wallace Street, when Braidwood served as the primary supply town for the Araluen, Majors Creek and Mongarlowe goldfields. Thousands of prospectors had arrived following the 1851 gold discovery, and the town's commercial strip grew rapidly to meet the demand. The NSW State Heritage Register listing describes Wallace Street as having "a fine collection of 19th century buildings" whose integrity makes it particularly significant. The building is Georgian in style, consistent with the town's character, which the same SHR listing describes as "an excellent surviving example of a Georgian period town plan, dating from the late 1830s." The local heritage item listing on the HMS State Heritage Inventory names it specifically as "Braidwood Hotel, including verandah and cast iron lacework," identifying the facade elements visible in this photograph as the features considered most significant. In 1867 the hotel appeared in evidence before what is recorded as Australia's first Royal Commission, the inquiry into the Clarke Brothers' bushranging campaign across the district. The building passed through successive ownerships and restoration programmes over the following century and a half, and has operated as a licensed hotel continuously since 1859 without closing. The town of Braidwood and its surrounding pastoral landscape were gazetted on the NSW State Heritage Register on 3 April 2006 as "Braidwood and its Setting" (SHR #01749), the first entire town to receive such a listing and, at the time, "by far the most complex listing" Heritage NSW had undertaken. This photograph was made in 2016, recording the facade as it stood: the rendered pink walls, the balcony, the chalkboard, the lettering above, and the stone base below.