Downstairs Light Switches

A row of light switches at the Terminus Hotel sits on the wall of the downstairs hallway, mounted on a small dark-stained timber backing plate. The switches are the brass dolly type that was the standard fitting in inner-Sydney pubs from the 1920s onwards, with white ceramic toggle handles and a brass cover plate behind. Each switch carries an enamel label on a small disc above it, naming the room it controls. The brass is dulled to a soft yellow patina. The plaster wall around the switches carries the same institutional dark green that runs through the working areas of the building.

The light switches controlled the public-facing rooms of the ground floor from a single point near the back-of-house, an arrangement common to the bigger Sydney pubs that needed to manage front and rear lighting independently. Sydney pubs of this period typically had a Public Bar, a Ladies Parlour (separate until the 1950s, when the Terminus merged its parlour with the Public Bar), a cellar, a kitchen, and a back-of-house hallway, each on its own switch. The visible building is the 1917 Tooth and Co. demolition and rebuild. The pub closed in 1983; the switches were left as they were. The 2018 restoration rewired the electrical system but kept fittings like this where they could be preserved.