Painted Exterior Advertisement

A painted advertisement on the exterior of the Terminus Hotel sits on the side wall of the building, the lettering applied directly to the brickwork in white paint that has weathered to off-cream over the decades. The text reads in a Federation-era serif face, the letterforms still legible but the paint patchy where the brick has weathered through. The ad is for a brand of beer once tied to the Tooth and Co. house network, the brand name in larger type at the top and a smaller line of supporting copy beneath. Ivy has climbed across part of the wall but the ad itself is clear of foliage. The brick around the lettering is dust-coated.

Painted external advertisements were the standard way pubs across NSW promoted the beer they served from the late nineteenth century through the 1960s, particularly in the Tooth and Co. tied-house network the Terminus belonged to from the 1917 rebuild. The ad on this wall would have been painted in one of the periodic refreshes the brewer commissioned across its hotels. After the pub closed in 1983 the ad was left untouched. The 2018 restoration kept the painted lettering as a heritage detail. The photograph is from 2016, before the work began.