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GLOBE HOTEL
Date Opened : 1838
Date Closed : 1921
Address :
34 North Street, Adelaide
History
| WHITE CONDUIT HOUSE INN | 1838 | 1882 |
| WHITE CONDUIT HOTEL | 1882 | 1911 |
| GLOBE HOTEL | 1911 | 1921 |
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Hotel Photos
Publicans
| The Globe Hotel began life in 1838 as the unusually named White Conduit House Inn, built by William Bradshaw. Its name was borrowed from London’s White Conduit House Tavern, itself named after a white stone water conduit in a nearby field. The Adelaide version was among the city’s very first hotels, built as a modest colonial stone structure on a private town acre, later formalised as North Street in the 1850s. By the late 1850s, the original inn had already become outdated and was rebuilt; the core of the structure still visible today, though later expanded. The hotel often catered to poorer patrons with cheap lodgings, but this reputation came at a cost, with several deaths reported on the premises over the years. Extensions followed in 1871 and again in 1882, shaping the grander building that survives to this day. Ownership eventually passed to brewers Syme and Sison in the late 1880s. When a prospective publican inspected the books, she was misled by inflated trade figures; the result of the brewery giving away free beer to boost numbers. She later took them to court for fraud, a scandal that only added to the hotel’s chequered history. The economic depression of the 1890s, combined with the rise of the temperance movement, restrictions such as banning barmaids, raising the minimum drinking age, and the introduction of six o’clock closing, placed the hotel under immense strain. In 1911 it was renamed the Globe Hotel in a bid to modernise its image, but this proved short-lived. In 1921 the Licensing Board closed it permanently, judging that Adelaide had too many small hotels. Remarkably, the building survived. Its fine stonework is still on display, now serving as a private residence. Heritage-listed today, it stands as a rare survivor of Adelaide’s earliest hotel era.  Hotel Building in 2025 |