Common Room

The common room at the Terminus Hotel sits at the upstairs front of the building, a shared sitting area for the long-term guests and the publican's family. The room runs along the John Street side, with a row of sash windows admitting the southern light. A timber-framed sofa sits along one wall, the upholstery cracked and dust-covered. An armchair in matching pattern faces the window. A small fireplace on the back wall is filled with the ash of its last fire. The walls are wallpapered in the same faded floral print that runs through the upstairs hall and the ladies' parlour. The ceiling is pressed-metal, painted cream, with a pendant light fitting at the centre.

The common room was the upstairs equivalent of the public bar downstairs: a shared room where the long-term residents of the pub gathered between meals, before bed, or for a quiet evening reading. The publican's family used it too. Sydney pubs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century commonly carried this kind of upstairs sitting room, with the common room and the publican's quarters together forming the residential side of the building. The Terminus ran this way until the 1983 closure. The 2018 renovation kept the room as part of the heritage fit-out.