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January 20th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Such an icon of social and historic merit in Freo is The Esplanade Hotel Fremantle.
The Esplanade Hotel Fremantle has a rich and interesting history, and is an important Western Australian institution. 1896 was the year “The Esplanade Hotel” opened. The Hotel quickly grew in popularity, and was a favourite family hotel. In November 1902, the Swan Brewery bought the Esplanade Hotel, and although in the coming years the lessees of the hotel changed many times, the ownership remained the same for the next seventy-six years. In 1903 the Esplanade was renovated and redesigned. By the end of the nineteen twenties Fremantle possessed a strong working class element, and in response to that change, the Esplanade Hotel began to adapt and cater for the many shipyard workers and trade union representatives who drank in the hotel’s bars.
January 20th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
The Esplanade Hotel Fremantle is an important Western Australian institution and constitutes an integral part of the Fremantle business community. It’s high standards of service and accommodation help to promote tourism both within Fremantle and throughout WA. Indeed, the relationship between the Esplanade, Fremantle and WA is very strong and has been highlighted in recent years by the hotel winning many prestigious awards and being inducted into the Western Australian Tourism Awards Hall of Fame.
But the success of the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle and its connection to WA are not simply modern phenomenons. By reviewing the history of the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle it becomes apparent that both of these aspects feature strongly throughout the hotel’s lifetime, and even in the years prior to its establishment in 1897. Indeed, the life of the hotel is inextricably linked to important Western Australian events and historical figures and the same trends and influences that have shaped Fremantle and WA, have also shaped the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle.
Certainly, it has been the ability of the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle to adapt to social and economic change over the years that has enabled the hotel to survive and prosper for so long. This capacity for change has meant that as Fremantle grew and developed over time, so to did the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle. Therefore, the hotel is very much a reflection of the history and changing fortunes of Fremantle and WA.
And certainly, it is true to say that Fremantle’s history and economic fortunes have not always been prosperous or successful. Established in 1829, the early years were tough ones for the Fremantle Colonists. Isolation was a huge problem as the colony was not on any major shipping routes. Both Perth and Fremantle were underdeveloped, expensive and floundering economically, all of which made life in the colonies an unattractive prospect. Indeed, Fremantle in particular must have appeared a desolate site for newly arriving Europeans. With no jetty and sandbars blocking the passage of large sailing ships, settlers were forced to depart from their ships and sail in small boats for about a mile to the shoreline. To European eyes it must have appeared to be the strangest country in the world, vastly different from the English City streets and green pastureland they were used to. Fremantle was little more than a village at this stage, consisting of around thirty inhabitants. It was marshy and mosquito infested, and the seasonal summer heat would have produced humid and uncomfortable conditions for the British Colonists.
James Henty, the very first owner of the land where the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle now sits, certainly experienced this hardship first hand. Henty arrived from England with his two brothers in 1829 and immediately took ownership of Fremantle Town Lot 150. He married Caroline Carter in May 1831, but both he and his wife soon became dissatisfied with the colony’s progress and left for Tasmania in January 1832.
During the eighteen thirties and forties, Fremantle’s difficulties continued and by 1848 the number of people leaving the colony began to exceed the number arriving. Something had to change and in 1850 that change occurred when the decision was made to begin the importation of convicts in order to boost the Colony’s dwindling population and work force. On June 1, 1850 the first batch of seventy-five convicts were brought into Fremantle on board the Scindian. Upon their arrival it was realised that there was no accommodation suitable for them besides the Round House which only contained eight cells. This problem was solved when Captain Daniel Scott, the second owner of Lot 150 and first owner of the adjoining block, Lot 152, agreed with Governor Charles Fitzgerald to lease his two wool stores on the corner of Marine Terrace and Essex Street for two-hundred pounds per annum. This provided the colony with a temporary convict depot until a more permanent jail could be built. The Governor initially promised to spend one-thousand pounds on improvements to the warehouses, but ultimately this money was used to cover the rental costs and all that was erected was a large stone wall to securely impound the convicts.
It is hard to believe that where the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle now sits, there once existed such a makeshift prison. But exist it did, and those early convicts proved to be an invaluable asset to the struggling colony, providing a much needed work force to assist the lagging local economy. The introduction of the convicts was also very timely, as it protected the colony from losing its population to the newly discovered goldfields in Eastern Australia.
A period of prosperity followed the introduction of the convicts to Western Australia. However, the convicts were not solely responsible for the advancements made by the colony in the eighteen fifties and sixties. Progress was mainly due to the development of farming and agriculture in rural areas, as well as the development of merchant trading businesses in the towns and urban centres.
Fremantle in particular had an exceptionally strong merchant community, whose power and influence flourished between 1860 to 1900. The merchant families who comprised this elite established themselves during Fremantle’s formative years when the colony badly needed goods and resources, but did not possess the economic structures to provide them. Their entrepreneurial spirit enabled them to take advantage of this situation, creating business opportunities and wealth. Indeed, their hegemony was established as a result of their economic success. They were self-made men, most of them either coming out from England or from eastern states colonies with little or no wealth to speak of, and the control they established over Fremantle, both socially and politically, was born out of their newly acquired financial prosperity. At their peak, the decisions of the Fremantle merchants largely determined how Fremantle was run, which workers were employed and what conditions they worked under. Members of this elite group could hire and dismiss labour at will, and, as all work undertaken was contracted according to the Master and Servant Act, they could also impose heavy penalties on workers who did not fulfil their duties.
Once again, these merchants, who played such a vital role in the development of Fremantle and ultimately the state, also have strong connections to the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle and the land upon which it stands. Captain Daniel Scott, mentioned earlier as the second owner of Lot 150, and his family, were a part of this elite group of Fremantle society. Captain Scott came to Fremantle form England in 1829 and he immediately assumed the position of Harbour Master, a position he held until he resigned in 1851. He was a successful businessman and did much to promote the local economy in Fremantle. He owned and operated two sailing ships, and in 1850 one of his ships brought the first cargo of pearl shell into Fremantle from Shark Bay. He was also the first chairman of the Fremantle Town Trust in 1848, a Justice of the Peace in 1851 and a member of the Fremantle Board of Education in 1861. Unfortunately, Captain Scott died in 1865, and his wife Frances followed him not long after in November that same year.
After Captain Scott’s death, his son Daniel Henry Scott, took over his father’s business schemes and inherited the ownership of Lot 150. In 1870 Daniel Henry Scott married Caroline Samson, daughter of Lionel Samson, who was another powerful merchant in elite Fremantle society. The marriage of Daniel and Caroline cemented a strong partnership between the Scott and the Samson families, who had been business partners both in Fremantle and in Geraldton since the earliest days of settlement in the colony.
However, Daniel Henry Scott died in 1874, at which time ownership of Lot 150 reverted briefly to his wife Caroline and then in 1878, to Mary Ann Gale, Captain Scott’s eldest daughter. Mary Ann only retained ownership of the property for a brief period, acquiring it in August and selling it in September. This quick exchange is probably an indication of the fact that there were no desirable structures or residences built on the property at this stage. Plans of the area from the days when it was used as a Convict Depot, show Lot 150 contained a washing shed, an exercise yard and a small group of offices for the guards and the gatekeeper. There do not seem to be any significant improvements made to the property from this time right up until 1878 when the Scott family finally sold it.
Phillip Cranworth Webster was the next owner of the property. Born in England in 1829, he arrived in Fremantle in 1858 and was initially the manager of Carter & Co, a drapery establishment. He subsequently became involved in auctioning, going into partnership with William Marmion. He then entered the wine trade and for the next twenty years ran a business of High Street. When he acquired Lot 150 in 1878, Webster became a Commissioning Agent and Importer of Goods, building a salesroom, warehouse and Hall of Commerce from which to operate his new business. He also built ‘Cranworth House’, which was his own private residence. However, in late 1881, Webster suffered an apoplectic seizure and in January 1882, Webster sold his business to Henry James Saw and moved back to High Street.
Henry James Saw came from a prominent Perth merchant family. He was educated at Bishop Hale’s School in Perth and began his career in 1874 as a clerk in Fremantle. By 1879 he was working for Mary Higham, the matriarch of one of Fremantle’s most famous merchant families, at their large and successful mercantile establishment, M. Higham & Sons. He had married Mary Higham’s daughter, Johanna, in 1877 and whilst it is unclear as to whether he was already under their employ and married the boss’s daughter or if he was offered a job by his new mother-in-law, his rapid climb to success is still impressive. Henry worked for the Highams until 1882 when Phillip Webster’s business became available and he was able to start his own enterprise.
Tragically, Henry dies in 1884 from a sudden bout of pleurisy and lung congestion, leaving his wife Johanna with their young family and the ownership of his merchant business and Lot 150. Johanna’s brothers took over the management of her late husband’s business and kept it operating on her behalf, but by 1887 she decided to least the Hall of Commerce and adjoining warehouse/salesroom to the merchant group Symon, Hammond and Hubble. In 1888 she sold it outright to them and moved away from Fremantle to Guildford.
It should also be noted that in 1885 the Samson family, mentioned before as being a part of the Fremantle merchant elite and having a close relationship with the Scott family, bought the limestone warehouses on Lot 152, previously used to house the convicts during the eighteen fifties. They established a bond store know as Lionel Samson & Sons, which continued to be owned and run by Lionel Samson’s descendants for the next seventy-four years, until it was sold in 1959.
Symon, Hammond and Hubble, the next owners of Lot 150, were also a part of the elite Fremantle merchant community. An 1888 newspaper advertisement describes the company as “Hardware Merchants, Shipping and Commission Agents for Fremantle and Carnarvon”, selling products such as corrugated iron, windmills, engines, cream separators, safes, fencing wire, dynamite, gun powder, Guiness’s Stout, Walker’s Whisky and South Australian wines. In 1891 Cecil Hammond left the partnership and the company name changed to Symon Hubble & Co, but by 1896 their business had dissolved, David Symon and Hubble both left Fremantle, they retained ownership of the property until 1902. David Symon never returned from England but George York Hubble did go back to Fremantle in 1900 when his Carnarvon store went bankrupt. However, in 1906 Hubble’s life came to an abrupt end when he was found dead on a street in Perth, having slashed his own throat.
It is quite significant that George Hubble died at this time and in such tragic circumstances. By the turn of the century, Fremantle and Western Australia had changed significantly from its colonial beginnings. As economic and political structures changed and social attitudes altered, the power the Fremantle merchants had enjoyed for so long began to wane. In many ways Hubble’s death symbolises the demise of the elite merchant community, who had dominated Fremantle throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century.
Fremantle changed so dramatically during this period because of four key factors; the Gold Rush of the eighteen nineties, the redesign and construction of Fremantle Harbour, the increase in the state’s agricultural output and the development of the railways. The Gold Rush and the increase in agricultural output generated unprecedented wealth in WA, by attracting prospectors and enabling trade to grow. Because Fremantle had redeveloped its harbour and port facilities and was linked to outlying rural areas by the new railway system, it became the funnel through which most of that wealth entered the state.
As more and more people flocked to Western Australia, the more tenuous the position of the Fremantle merchants became and ironically, it was the very wealth and prosperity that they had helped to create which ultimately undermined their position. Travellers who came to Fremantle were not interested in fitting into a rigid class structure, where workers were firmly entrenched at the bottom of the social and economic hierarchy. They had come to make their fortunes and showed contempt for the aristocratic nature of the upper classes that presumed to hold sway in the Fremantle business community.
It is into this new class of people that the next owner of Lot 150 belongs. Hubble leased the property to William Meadly and his wife Martha and it was their idea to transform the place into a hotel. It is fortunate that a book containing Meadly’s letters is still in existence today and as such, we can ascertain a much clearer image of what he and his family were like. Meadly’s writing provides strong evidence that newcomers to Fremantle were critical of the antiquated values and way of life in existence at the time.
As you know I have been to a great many different places in this wicked world of ours but I must give this place the palm for being the most one horse place I ever got into in my life. I have not seen a man yet that has been here twelve months or under that has got a good word to say for the place. The people seem to be fossilized and as long as they get enough to eat and not disturbed in their sleep (which is a perpetual one) is all they want. I have often heard it said that the people in WA did not like to see strangers and it is quite true with most of the people here. These nasty strangers are pushing in here and there where they have no business to do and are making the poor people move about much quicker than they hitherto have had to do.
Meadly also observed how working class people were looked down upon in Fremantle and how their subservience to their wealthy employers contributed to this backwardness.
I cannot help making a few more remarks regarding the state of the place and the people over here. I do not think that there is a more primitive place. It puts you in mind of pictures you see of ancient places and the people are just as ancient. They go about as though they were asleep and the working people are looked down upon in a different light then they are in the other colonies. For instance, last week a man that was working at a Hotel left without giving the usual weeks notice. The Hotel Keeper sued him and he was fined fifty pounds or three months. He is now doing the three months, yet Britons never shall be slaves.
But Meadly, and other newcomers like him, did not let this stand in their way. As well as noting the ‘primitiveness’ of Fremantle, he also saw its potential to grow and develop, and this inspired him to stay and continue in the bakery business that he began when he first arrived in 1891.
I quite believe if we can secure the business that we will go straight ahead again. What I am afraid of is some of these people that is flocking here in every boat will jump at the business when they know that it is going.
It was also on the strength of this belief in the potential for development in Fremantle that led him to open the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle. In 1895, Meadly wrote, ‘Ballantyne finished up with the Bakery Comp last night and he and I are applying for a license for the Symons and Hubble place.’ In his next letter Meadly writes to his friend, Alfred Ballantyne, who was at that stage in Adelaide, and discussed the money required to pay for the renovations necessary to turn the building into a hotel.
We will deal with the money part first. Mell’s tender for doing the work after cutting out over one hundred pounds worth of fancy work was 750 pounds. I thought that was too high. He said it was a large place and he had to cut things very fine. Yet I got Davies to get a tender from Mr Jardine. His price was 795 pounds, so of course I let Mell go on with the job. The time allowed was ten weeks, no fittings are allowed for in that price, only work you saw in the plans and while they are building the kitchen, I think it imperative that they should build a billiard saloon.
He also said that to pay for the renovations would take all the money they had and that it would be necessary to borrow five hundred pounds from his shares in the Bakery Company in order to buy furniture. He asked Ballantyne to bring over furniture catalogues and price lists with him from South Australia so that they could work on the prices and conditions involved in shipping over the furniture they would require. At this stage they needed to furnish ‘one drawing room, one sitting room, one snooker room, one large dining room and about fifteen bedrooms’.
However, Meadly’s partnership with Ballantyne does not last. The exact reason is not clear through his letters, but there seems to be some legal dispute and Meadly buys out his share and becomes the sole proprietor and leaseholder of the Hotel.
We are now waiting for the lawyer to do his part. They have taken Ballantyne on again for how long we can not tell. It suits our book very well just now. I think it will end in us buying him out of the Hotel.
And in September 1896, the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle was opened, bringing two years of hard work to fruition. Meadly’s achievements serve not only as an indication of the increasing wealth and prosperity across the state, but also that there now existed a new generation of businessmen in Fremantle, distinct from the old merchant elite, whose practices and way of life were becoming a thing of the past. The newcomers to WA were inspired by the heady confidence that must have been circulating during the eighteen nineties, when gold had been discovered, fortunes were being made and a new community and way of life was being formed. The Esplanade Hotel Fremantle was born out of that confidence and for this reason, it is often referred to as ‘a typical Gold Rush hotel’, its wide verandahs and ornate architectural characteristics making it distinctively representative of the eighteen nineties period.
The Esplanade Hotel Fremantle quickly grew in popularity. It was a family hotel and it became a favourite holiday venue for people from the goldfields and farming areas. Its close proximity to the beach and the Fremantle swimming baths made it a popular place to stay. Another advantage of its seaside location was the cooling breeze, which arrived during the hot summer months and became known as the ‘Fremantle Doctor’. Brochures of the day, circulated by the Fremantle City Council, emphasized ‘the veritable pleasure ground of life-giving and healing essences derived from the ozone-laden atmosphere.’
In November 1902, the Swan Brewery bought the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle and although in the coming years the lessees of the hotel changed many times, the ownership remained the same for the next seventy-six years. In the early twentieth century, the Swan Brewery began a process of buying and building hotels across the state in order to secure and protect the Brewery’s market. This process was common among brewery companies and was referred to as ‘tying trade’. After buying licensed properties the Swan Brewery would place a covenant on the lessees, preventing them from buying or selling any other brand of beer of ale.
However, the Swan Brewery’s ownership of the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle did not hinder the htoel from continuing to develop its own sense of style and place within the Fremantle community. As in the past, the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle developed in conjunction with Fremantle and WA, and was associated with the same people and events synonymous with local Western Australian history.
In 1903 the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle was renovated and redesigned. The plans were designed by Joseph Herbert Eales, an accomplished architect who came to WA in 1897, attracted by the glowing reports of the Golden West. Eales popular style soon earned him an enviable reputation and he went on to design a variety of well known Western Australian buildings, ranging from commercial city structures and hotels, to homesteads and farm buildings. He worked in Fremantle for the first six years he was in Western Australia, during which time he designed the Fremantle Markets, the Detmold’s Building, the Terminus Hotel, the Roman Catholics Girl’s School and additions to the Federal Hotel.
Eales’ plans reorganised the interior structure of the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle and made the exterior façade of the hotel more distinctive and ornate. Perhaps the most significant addition he made was the dome shaped corner turret, that is still one of the main feature of the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle today.
However, despite its decorative finish, the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle began to change from its original family orientation. This change began in 1904 when the Fremantle Trades Hall opened opposite the Esplanade on Collie Street, becoming the headquarters for some fifty trade unions during the early nineteen hundreds. Fremantle was beginning to industrialise and had started to improve its port facilities and capacity for shipbuilding. The beach in front of the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle was reclaimed and used for shipping yards and Fremantle quickly changed from being a picturesque, seaside town, to an industrial, working class city. Fremantle’s importance as an industrial port city was strengthened by the Great War and Australia’s need to ship supplies to the allied forces in Europe.
By the end of the nineteen twenties Fremantle possessed a strong working class element and in response to that change, the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle began to adapt and cater for the many shipyard workers and trade union representatives who drank in the hotel’s bars.
With the nineteen thirties came the Great Depression and like the rest of Australia and the world, Fremantle and WA suffered through a harsh and barren economic period. Poverty and unemployment characterise this period of history and whether it was due to the Esplanade’s ability to cope through these difficult times or simply because men who were down on their luck found solace in a beer with their mates, unlike many other businesses the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle managed to survive the Depression.
By the end of the nineteen thirties, Fremantle’s economic climate was slowly beginning to improve. Job security, which had been shattered by the Depression, was still a difficult commodity for working men in Fremantle to obtain. The bargaining power of the Lumpers Union had been severely weakened by the 1928 Transport Act, which officially recognised the Casual Labourers Union, thus freeing employers from the obligation to negotiate with one united union. The preference for casual labour led to the development of the ‘pick-up’ system, where companies recruited men to labour on a daily basis. The wooden benches on the verandahs of the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle, still in existence today, were one of the locations where pick-ups occurred. The benches were placed there by Paddy Troy, the secretary for the Waterside Workers Trade Union, who hoped to give the men some semblance of dignity while they waited for company representatives to come looking for casual labourers.
Indeed, they were tough times for working men in Fremantle. The usage of casual labour gave employers an excuse not to provide their workers with adequate facilities or pay them above the minimum wage level. Their work was dirty and tiresome and it was not uncommon for the lumpers to be required to carry wheat sacks weighing up to 200lbs for as long as twelve hours a day.
The toughness these men developed to cope with their harsh working conditions flowed into their social activities as well. In the late nineteen thirties and early forties, the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle began to stage boxing matches to attract the local workers to its bars. Bouts were held one night each week and boxers of the calibre of Don Luff, a former welter-weight champion and Arthur Parker, another well known WA boxer, trained in a gymnasium at the rear of the Hotel. The famous ‘Bull’ McCoy, a former bantamweight champion, is said to have coached at the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle during this time as well.
In many ways it was World War Two that ended the Depression. War provided a focus for Australia’s lagging economy and initiatives such as rationing and price controls, gave the federal government direct control over financial development. This control did not result in huge changes to national or state economic infrastructures. By the end of the war, Western Australia still relied heavily on primary production and extractive industries and on Fremantle Port’s capacity to export what they produced. What had changed was the capacity of these industries to grow and in the postwar period the renewed expansion and development of Western Australia’s primary producers in rural areas and industry in Fremantle and Perth revitalised the local economy.
Thus, the Second World War reinforced Fremantle’s role as an industrial port city and radical changes to state and national immigration policies introduced after its conclusion meant working class men and their families were attracted to Fremantle, not just from within Australia, but around the world. As such, the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle continued to be a working class pub, deriving much of its business from men who came in for a drink on their way home from work and the flow of workers to and from the Trades Hall.
In 1942, Anthony and Doris Mortimer took over the lease of the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle, having previously been running the Rockingham Hotel. Sadly, Anthony Mortimer died in 1963, but Doris stayed on to manage the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle for another 10 years. She became a well-known figure in Fremantle, known affectionately as “Mrs Mort” and her strong personality earned her a reputation as someone not to be trifled with. Just as other owners and occupiers of the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle had been in the past, the Mortimers were a central part of the local Fremantle community.
However, by the nineteen sixties and seventies, the working class atmosphere that had dominated Fremantle society for so long was beginning to change. This process began when Fremantle’s economy started to stagnate. The economic activity in the area began to slow and the number of waterside workers in Fremantle dropped from two thousand to four hundred. The prosperity from the iron ore mining in the state’s North West that had a profound effect on the city of Perth, did not filter through to Fremantle. Unlike Fremantle, Perth’s business community grew rapidly during this time and many of its old buildings were pulled down to make way for new high-rise constructions.
But Fremantle did not undergo such development and as a result, retained many of its old style buildings and architectural heritage. Due to Fremantle’s economic slump and high rates of unemployment, the cost of housing was relatively cheap and this had the effect of attracting a variety of artists, most of whom were young and fairly poor. They adapted disused warehouses into studios and galleries and soon Fremantle had become a magnet for all kinds of musicians, potters, filmmakers and writers.
Indeed, the arts played an important role in changing Fremantle from being purely an industrial, working class city. The event that contributed most to this change was the 1987 America’s Cup Yacht Race. The whole of Australia had exploded with joy when Alan Bond’s Australia Two defeated Dennis Connor’s Liberty in 1984 and when it was announced that the Cup Defence would be conducted on the waters in Gage Roads, off Fremantle, the port city geared itself for a hallmark event.
In anticipation of the population explosion the Cup would bring to Fremantle, the owners of the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle, Winterbottom Holdings Ltd, invester $14 million to renovate and extend the hotel. The Esplanade Hotel Fremantle reopened in December 1985 with a four star rating and contained 140 bedrooms, function and convention facilities, a restaurant for up to 130 people, swimming pool, spa and sauna. Even the Old Trades Hall, which had been converted into a theatre restaurant in 1968, was resold to the Aga Khan group in 1986, and completely renovated into an elegant, Italian-style restaurant.
When the Cup Trials began in 1987, the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle was inundated with travellers who came to witness the races. The America’s Cup had sparked off a major economic boom period in Western Australian history. Tourists, attracted here by the yacht race, discovered a unique city, full of beautiful buildings and a thriving artistic community. The Esplanade Hotel Fremantle embraced the influx of tourists to Fremantle, providing them with world class standards of accommodation and service.
Indeed, the tourism has now become an integral part of the Western Australian economy and the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle has both benefited from and encouraged this trend. The Esplanade continued to expand and improve its facilities and services after the America’s Cup was over, acquiring the Old Trades Hall, now known as Manor House and refurbishing the building for use as a function and convention centre.
Then in 1991 Camellia Holdings Pty Ltd, who still currently own the hotel, bought the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle. It was a decision made by Marilyn Rodgers, who was at the time looking for a business to invest in. She was instantly attracted to the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle and quickly decided to purchase it. Her instincts paid off, as the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle has gone from strength to strength, attracting business people and holidaymakers from around the globe. Under her guidance the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle was again extended and renovated in 1996, this time $20 million being spent on the improvements. Now, the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle offers an even wider range of facilities, including a fitness centre, a business centre, two heated swimming pools, a sauna, three heated spas, two fully licensed restaurants, a lobby gift shop and a total of 300 rooms.
The Esplanade Hotel Fremantle is then, a unique and special hotel. Its architecture is a rare blend of colonial, federation and modern designs and combines all these styles to produce its own unique flavour. Its history embodies the evolution of Fremantle and highlights significant events from the Western Australian past and present. Its ability to stay abreast of change has meant the Esplanade Hotel Fremantle has acted as somewhat of a social barometer, exemplifying the changing moods and growth periods, at both local and state level.
The Esplanade Hotel Fremantle is of significant social value as it has contributed to the Fremantle community’s sense of place as a centre for social and recreational activities since the 1890’s and is a living reminder of Fremantle’s past.
February 13th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
We love to take our two daughters, aged 4 and 2 to run around Esplande park and play on the swings. On a hot summer’s afternoon the sea breeze comes in and makes it a lovely place to spend and hour or two and then maybe we’ll cross the park to Little Creature’s a have a pizza and beer or two before heading home.
Caryl
September 7th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
We love to take our two daughters, aged 4 and 2 to run around Esplande park and play on the swings. On a hot summer’s afternoon the sea breeze comes in and makes it a lovely place to spend and hour or two and then maybe we’ll cross the park to Little Creature’s a have a pizza and beer or two before heading home.
Caryl…