Eastern Facade

The eastern facade of the Terminus Hotel runs along the John Street side of the building, the red-brick wall climbing two storeys above the footpath with sash windows at regular intervals. Ivy has climbed across most of the facade in a dense uniform cover, the vine reaching the roof in places and turning over the parapet onto the upper surfaces. The brick is mostly hidden behind the vine; where it shows through, the joints are darkened from decades of harbour weather. A row of cast-iron lacework runs along the first-floor balcony, partly covered by the ivy. The downpipes are original cast-iron, painted black, in good condition.

The visible building is the 1917 Tooth and Co. demolition and rebuild, in the Federation hotel form that has been cited as a rare level of intact fabric for a pub of this period. The Terminus's John Street facade became one of the most recognisable Sydney pub exteriors during the 33 years the building stood closed between 1983 and 2016. The ivy started growing across the wall in the 1960s or 1970s and went unchecked after the McElwaine family closed the pub. By the mid-1990s the vine had largely covered the wall; by the 2010s it had become the building's defining visual feature. The 2018 restoration kept the ivy in place across most of the eastern and southern facades.