Bar Area

The public bar at the Terminus Hotel runs along the John Street side of the ground floor, a long room with the timber bar counter on one side and a row of windows on the other. The pressed-metal ceiling is painted cream, partly missing in places. The timber counter top is scratched and worn from decades of glasses sliding across it. The back-bar shelving carries only empty space; the stock was cleared not long after the doors shut in 1983. The mirrors behind the shelves are darkened with dust. The floor is tiled in pale ceramic in a checkerboard pattern that runs the length of the room.

The corner has held a continuous licence since 1841, under four names: Pyrmont Hotel, Land's End, Coopers Arms (which crossed Harris Street to the corner in the 1860s), and Terminus, renamed around 1900 to capitalise on the electric tram terminus opened at the front door in 1898. The visible building is the 1917 demolition and rebuild by Tooth and Co., NSW's largest brewer. The pub closed in 1983 when the McElwaine family ended its tenure. Brett photographed this room in 2016, two years before the 2018 reopening returned the building to service.