Toilet

A single porcelain toilet at the Terminus Hotel sits in a small tiled cubicle on one of the upper floors, the door hung off its top hinge and skewed open. The toilet is the standard British high-cistern type that was common in Sydney pubs through the first half of the twentieth century: a cast-iron cistern mounted high on the wall behind the bowl, with the flush handle reached by a long pull chain. The bowl is glazed white porcelain, stained at the rim. The cistern is dust-coated, the chain still attached. The tiled floor of the cubicle is pale green hexagonal tile, with the grout darkened by decades of foot traffic and damp.

High-cistern toilets like this one were the standard fit-out for inner Sydney pubs through the first half of the twentieth century. The visible building dates from the 1917 Tooth and Co. demolition and rebuild, which added accommodation upstairs as part of compliance with NSW licensing reform. The toilet block was part of that fit-out or one of the early-twentieth-century upgrades that followed. The pub closed in 1983 and the toilets stopped being used. The 2018 restoration refitted the bathrooms throughout to modern standards. The toilet in this photograph was made in 2016, before the work began. The fitting is now gone.