Eighty Druitt Street is a prominently located, heritage building in the Town Hall precinct of Sydney’s CBD. It’s colourful history owes its origins to an 1888 competition conducted by the Excelsior Land Investment and Building Company (and Bank Ltd) to design a hotel and banking premises on the corner of Druitt and York Streets (opposite the QVB – Queen Victoria Building). The contest was won by architect Ambrose Thornley and the completed commercial construction (circa 1890) adopted the name suggested by Thornley, “Central Hotel”.

(at left Central Hotel, circa 1900 – dwarfed by the massive QVB building)

Along the York Street frontage of the building was a separate “banking chamber”. In 1896 this became a branch of the City Bank of Sydney. The CBS banking company folded in 1918 and its branches were taken over by the Australian Bank of Commerce. By 1931 the ABS including York Street branch was absorbed into the Bank of NSW.

Meanwhile, the Central Hotel was bought in 1904 by a “Mr Roberts” who had apparently previous done a sterling job of value-adding and enhancing the nearby Criterion Family Hotel (The Newsletter (Sydney), 17-Dec-1904)✱. During the first decade of the 20th century the hotel was renamed the Gresham Hotel. In 1925 the hotel was bought by leading brewery Tooth and Co (‘Gresham Hotel: Sold for £47,000’, The Sun (Sydney), 20-Nov-1925).

In the 1980s the Gresham was converted into offices and in 1995 the building was purchased by the Government of Hong Kong. It has operated as the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Sydney, representing China’s Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. The building is also used to promote Hong Kong tourism under the aegis of the HK Tourism Board.

(Photo credit: www.hktosydney.gov.hk)

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✱ located on the corner of Pitt and Park Streets, the hotel was part of the Criterion Theatre complex. The Sydney newspaper report of this reads like a glowing advertisement for the mysterious “Mr Roberts’” business