Raffles Hotel is located at the corner of Canning Highway

Canning Highway

Canning Highway is a mostly 4 lane single carriageway major arterial road in Perth, Western Australia. The speed limit is 60 km/h. It is located south of the Swan River and links Perth with Fremantle, running between The Causeway in Victoria Park and Queen Victoria Street in...

 and Canning Beach Road in the Perth

Perth, Western Australia

Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....

 suburb of Applecross

Applecross, Western Australia

Applecross is an affluent riverside suburb of Perth, Western Australia, bounded by Canning Highway and the Swan River. It is located within the City of Melville.Like the name Perth, the suburb of Applecross borrows its name from the region in Scotland...

, Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

. It is a two-storey hotel designed in the Inter-War Functionalist style and is one of the few examples of a hotel in this style surviving in the Perth metropolitan area. Earlier named the Canning Bridge Hotel, it has operated continuously as a licensed hotel since at least 1896. For over 50 years until 2002, it was owned by Australian nightclub owner and property developer Abe Saffron

Abe Saffron

Abraham Gilbert "Abe" Saffron was an Australian nightclub owner and property developer who was reputed to have been one of the major figures in Australian organised crime in the latter half of the 20th century....

, whose plan to demolish the hotel was successfully opposed by the Art Deco Society of Western Australia in a ten-year campaign.

History

The location of Canning Bridge

Canning Bridge

Canning Bridge is a traffic bridge which is the most downstream crossing of the Canning River in the city of Perth, Western Australia. The bridge is a part of Canning Highway, and it connects the suburbs of Como and Applecross. The Canning River is approximately 100 metres wide at the crossing,...

 on the road from Fremantle

Fremantle, Western Australia

Fremantle is a city in Western Australia, located at the mouth of the Swan River. Fremantle Harbour serves as the port of Perth, the state capital. Fremantle was the first area settled by the Swan River colonists in 1829...

 to Perth and Guildford

Guildford, Western Australia

Guildford is a suburb of Perth, Western Australia, located 13 km northeast of the city. Its Local Government Area is the City of Swan.-History:Guildford was established in 1829 on the Swan River, being sited near a permanent fresh water supply...

 made it a suitable location for accommodation and refreshments. In January 1850 the first Canning Bridge was constructed and soon after, on 4 May, a liquor licence was granted to a Samuel Duffield, owner of the Bridge Inn of Canning. It is not known where that inn was located but it was possibly a predecessor of the 1896 Canning Bridge Hotel, near the bridge on its western (Applecross

Applecross

The Applecross peninsula is a peninsula in Wester Ross, Highland, on the west coast of Scotland. The name Applecross is at least 1300 years old and is not used locally to refer to the 19th century village with the pub and post office, lying on the small Applecross Bay, facing the Inner Sound, on...

) side—which was remodelled in 1937 as the present Raffles Hotel.
The Canning Bridge Hotel was a single-storey structure with a high, gabled roof. Beside it stood a pavilion with a dance hall on the upper floor and refreshment rooms below. The hotel provided a venue for many social and sporting groups such as the W.A. Hunt Club. The hotel was also used by the East Fremantle District Road Board for its first council meeting on 22 March 1901.

This building was extensively upgraded in 1937, with a distinctive Art Deco

Art Deco

Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

 facade

Facade

A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....

 designed by architect William G. Bennett

William G. Bennett

William Garnsworthy Bennett was a Western Australian architect, well known for his Art Deco and Inter-War Functionalist style of civic, commercial and domestic buildings, including the Lord Forrest Olympic Pool in Kalgoorlie, the Beverley Town Hall, the Raffles Hotel and Plaza Theatre and Arcade...

, to coincide with the construction of the current bridge and the upgrading of Canning Highway. The building was renamed the Raffles Hotel after the renowned Raffles Hotel

Raffles Hotel

Raffles Hotel is a colonial-style hotel in Singapore, and one of the world's most famous hotels. The hotel was established by the famous Armenian Sarkies Brothers. Opened in 1887, it was named after Singapore's founder Sir Stamford Raffles. Managed by Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, it is...

 in Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

. The facade, and in particular the nature and placement of the forward extension of the hotel, reveals a conscious effort on the part of the architect to respect the importance of the newly constructed Applecross District Hall to the community and its streetscape value.

William Bennett had been a partner in the firm Eales Cohen & Bennett, which was responsible for the Applecross District Hall. He left the firm in 1935. Other significant works by Bennett include the Plaza Theatre and Arcade in central Perth (1936-7), the Kalgoorlie

Kalgoorlie, Western Australia

Kalgoorlie, known as Kalgoorlie-Boulder, is a town in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia, and is located east-northeast of state capital Perth at the end of the Great Eastern Highway...

 Olympic Pool (1938), the Chalet at Araluen

Araluen Botanic Park (Australia)

Araluen Botanical Park is located in a sheltered valley in the Darling Ranges approximately south of Perth, Western Australia, in the suburb of Roleystone. The Botanical Park covers an area of about . There is a small entry fee to the park, and it is open every day of the year...

 and other structures (1937), and the Beaucott Buildings (c.1937) in Beaufort Street

Beaufort Street, Perth

Beaufort Street is a major road in the inner north-eastern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia, linking the Morley area to the central business district...

.

The hotel was reconstructed at a cost of approximately 10,000 pounds. One of its features was a biergarten, which is believed to be the first of its kind in Australia. The garden was situated on the northern boundary of the hotel property.

Raffles Hotel reveals the new design aesthetic then in vogue of streamlined functional forms with an emphasis on horizontal lines admirably suited to the site. Its design took good advantage of the riverside location. The main feature is the large curved loggias on both floors provided on the river frontage. From there, extensive views of the Swan and Canning Rivers are available. The exterior of the hotel was described as rendered in cream cement with sunk rustication emphasising the horizontal lines on the main building. The pitched roof over the first-storey section was covered in colour-blend tiles, and green-painted circular steps led to the entrances of the hotel from the Canning Highway frontage.

Apart from its status as "the epitome" of Perth's social scene in the 1940s and 1950s, the Raffles later became noted for its animated neon billboards advertising beer. In 1959 a separate motor lodge, consisting of a double-storey building of twenty rooms, was constructed at the rear of the main hotel building. According to the local press this new development met a public demand for motels offering service to the family man. Other changes to the hotel were made in 1985, when apparently a fire caused damage to the first floor which required a new metal-deck roof to replace the former pitched tiled roof. A nightclub, The Raffs, was also constructed on the eastern (river) side of the building, and a drive-in bottle shop built on the Canning Bridge Road frontage. During the 1970s and 1980s the Raffles was notable for its live music, attracting the most popular local and interstate acts.

Current uses

In 2002, the site was sold to the construction company Multiplex

Multiplex (company)

Brookfield Multiplex is a global contracting and development company that designs, builds and maintains property and infrastructure assets.- History :Brookfield Multiplex was founded as Multiplex in 1962 in Perth, Western Australia by John Roberts...

, which proceeded to redevelop the site into a 17-storey apartment tower. As part of the planning permissions, the Art Deco 1939 building was retained and renovated.

Heritage value

The hotel was listed in the City of Melville's Municipal Heritage Inventory (which was adopted 19 December 1994) and classified by the National Trust of Australia

National Trust of Australia

The Australian Council of National Trusts is the peak body for community-based, non-government organisations committed to promoting and conserving Australia's indigenous, natural and historic heritage....

 (WA) on 3 July 1995. It received an interim listing on the State Register of Heritage Places on 16 March 2001, was nominated for the Register of the National Estate on 28 September 2001, and received a permanent registration on the State Register on 22 January 2002.

Further reading

• City for all Seasons: The Story of Melville Cooper, W S and McDonald, G A (1989) City of Melville ISBN 0949663026
• The City of Melville - from bushland to expanding metropolis Uren, Malcolm (1975) City of Melville