Wallpapered Guest Room

A wallpapered guest room on the upper floor of the Terminus Hotel keeps a single iron-framed bed against one wall, a small chest of drawers beside the bed, and a timber wardrobe in the corner. The bedding has been pulled back. The walls are papered in a faded floral print, the wallpaper joins separating at the corners where the glue has failed. The patterned wallpaper runs floor to ceiling, the colours dulled by decades of light but the pattern still legible. A sash window above the chest of drawers admits the southern light from the John Street side. The pendant light fitting hangs from a pressed-metal ceiling rose. A small framed picture hangs above the bed at an angle.

Floral wallpaper of this type was the standard decoration of Sydney pub-accommodation rooms through the mid twentieth century, often kept long after the public areas of the building were updated. The visible building is the 1917 Tooth and Co. demolition and rebuild, with the upstairs accommodation refitted at various points across its working life. The Terminus closed in 1983 and the upstairs rooms were emptied or partially emptied across the 33 years that followed. This room kept its furniture and the wallpaper intact until Brett photographed it in 2016, two years before the 2018 restoration reopened the building.