Boundary Hotel

Donald Wilson, a Glaswegian who had arrived on the Artemesia in 1848, acquired a 3 acre 2 roods allotment of land, which included this site, by Deed of Grant in 1850. Wilson built the first hotel on the site in 1864, naming it the Boundary, after the street on which it was built. Wilson held a liquor license for the hotel from 1864 to 1872, transferring the license to John Drake in 1872.  John Wilson, son of Donald, acquired the license in 1874 and held it for ten years. In 1883 Donald Wilson passed title of part of his allotments, which included the hotel, to his son. 

It appears that almost immediately upon acquiring the property, John Wilson engaged the firm of John Hall and Son to design a new hotel. He took out a mortgage to James Laird over a seven-year period to presumably finance the venture. The red brick hotel was erected by 1884, a contemporary report attested to the fact that the hotel was ‘a most comfortable one’ and provided rooms and stabling ‘for the good accommodation of visitors’. Although he retained ownership of the hotel, Wilson transferred the license in 1884 to James Cain, who held it for five years. Subsequent lessees included Thomas and Margaret Lehane, John Gustavson and William Reuban McEwan. 

In 1922, Thomas Corrigan, who mortgaged it to John Wilson for £5000, acquired the hotel. Corrigan agreed to a ten-year lease of the hotel to Castlemaine Brewery and Quinlan Gray & Co, during a time when the brewery was expanding directly into hotels. During 1930s, major renovations were carried out on the hotel. These included a bedroom wing that was added facing Jane Street, plus two small wings and a verandah at the rear. These changes were made at the behest of Castlemaine Perkins so as to increase accommodation space in the hotel. The corner main entry doorway was also removed as was the rear kitchen block, as were the cantilevered verandahs and their external door and windows. Some effort was made to use materials detailing that replicated the original 1884 design.

In 1934 Thomas Corrigan transferred ownership to Corrigans Pty Ltd, and after his death in 1935 the family business continued. During the 1930s, Queensland Breweries secured a lease from 1936 into the 1960s. In 2000 the property still remains in the ownership of Corrigan Pty Ltd. 

The building also has several other auxiliary rooms that are orange brick but are not under the main roof, and could be described as box-like add ons. However, each of these have a character and material usage that is representative of the time period. A ground floor space on Jane Street has rectangular sections of decorative brickwork. However the hotel has recently been renovated and all the brickwork on the ground level has been timber board veneered. The whole exterior of the building has been also been painted. A balcony has also been created by the addition of timber balustrading on the top of the Jane Street building section. The wall on the right end of the Boundary street elevation finishes with a parapet at roof level, but still has the lower roof section supported by tapered beams. The fabric of the building seems predominantly intact, the major change being the painting of the facebrick exterior.  

This building has over the years had a series of renovations and additions. The above mentioned alterations are only some. Originally the hotel building was only the section under the main hipped roof. It had a brick chimneystack rising from the left side of the Boundary Street elevation. A verandah balcony ran along both Jane Street and Boundary Street, with decorative iron verandah brackets and balustrading. The verandah roof was convex corrugated iron sheeting with a diagonal angling to the street corner. This diagonal was also expressed in the main roof. The Hotel entry was off Jane Street through a projecting gable porch on the ground level.

1. Allom Lovell architects, Boundary Hotel Report, (Brisbane: Allom Lovell, December 2001)

2. Brisbane City Council Water Supply and Sewerage Detail Plans

3. Brandle, Maximilian and Karas, Steve, Multicultural Brisbane, (Brisbane: Ethnic Communities Council of QLD, 1998)

4. Department of Natural Resources, Queensland Certificates of Title and other records

5. Donnelly, John J., Hotels of Brisbane, (thesis, 1963)

6. JOL Estate Map Collection and photographic collection

7. McKellar's Map of Brisbane and Suburbs. Brisbane: Surveyor-General’s Office, 1895

8. Morrisson, The Aldine History of Queensland, Volume 2 1888

9. Queensland Post Office Directories