The Broadway Hotel, Woolloongabba was built in 1890 during a period of major growth in Queensland’s economy, population, and construction. It operated as a privately-owned commercial hotel until its closure due to a fire in 2010. In 2018, it was heavily damaged in a second fire and remains closed. The area now known as Woolloongabba is part of the traditional country of the
Jagera and
Turrbal People. Following European occupation, it was called One Mile Swamp due to a series of large waterholes stretching for a mile between what is now Stanley and Vulture streets. The roads from the
Logan and
Darling Downs districts converged there and in the 1850s bullock drays and livestock were rested at the waterholes. By the 1860s some of the waterholes had been drained and a fledgling commercial precinct emerged. The name, Woolloongabba, replaced One Mile Swamp in the 1870s. Queensland experienced an economic boom beginning in the 1870s and peaking in the late 1880s before growth slowed dramatically in the early 1890s due to a series of economic setbacks. During the boom, Queensland travel routes and services, particularly railways, were expanded, stimulating growth in industries, increasing the availability of consumer goods and construction materials, and spurring closer settlement, particularly in Brisbane.
Trams were introduced as a form of public transport in Brisbane in the mid-1880s and expanded rapidly, shaping the development of the city’s suburbs. Many new hotels were built in the 1880s to service the increased size and mobility of the Queensland population. In the late 19th century, hotels (licensed drinking establishments that also provided lodging) were key venues for social interaction. They provided a vital service for travellers, pastoralists, workers, and others moving around the colony, and were typically located on or near major travel routes or services. Queensland’s many late 19th to early 20th century hotels shared characteristics, including being located prominently in growing urban or suburban areas, serviced by transport routes and amenities. They were typically two- or three-storey, loadbearing brick and timber-framed structures with a grand form, architectural style, and elaborate detailing, designed to attract public attention. The interior functions included public hospitality amenities, such as public bars, lounges, dining rooms, bedrooms, and ablutions, serviced by back of house rooms, such as cellars, store rooms, kitchens, and laundries. In the 1880s, Woolloongabba developed quickly, together with the adjoining suburbs of
East Brisbane,
Buranda, and
Stones Corner, following the expansion of the railway and tramway systems and the growth of associated commerce and light industry. In 1881 a dry dock was established at
South Brisbane and the nearby coal wharves were linked to a railway goods yard at Woolloongabba in 1884. The first (horse drawn) trams in Brisbane ran between Woolloongabba and
Newstead in 1885 and had reached Buranda by 1887. South Brisbane and Woolloongabba were amalgamated to form the City of South Brisbane in 1888 and in the following year the first Post Office opened in Woolloongabba and was serviced by tram. The area was booming, as was the Queensland economy generally. It was within this buoyant context that Brisbane publican Michael McKenna bought land in Woolloongabba and built his substantial Broadway Hotel to a design by John Hall & Son. John Hall & Son was a successful, Brisbane-based architecture firm, operating from 1883 until 1896. The firm was extremely busy during the 1880s, designing more than 100 buildings in the late 1880s alone, but work lessened after the economic downturn of the early 1890s. Led by principal
Francis Richard Hall, the firm employed a number of talented architects, including
John Smith Murdoch from the late 1880s to 1893. The firm’s designs were primarily for Brisbane buildings, mostly residences and villas; likely the firm’s most prominent and notable design was the
South Brisbane Municipal Chambers (QHR 600306), designed in c1890, and its construction completed in 1892 to considerable fanfare. During the same period, the firm completed designs for at least nine Brisbane hotels, one of which was the Broadway Hotel, possibly by Murdoch. The Broadway Hotel was constructed by local contractors Wooley and White, with their £4820 tender accepted in September 1889. The hotel’s Woolloongabba site, bounded by
Logan Road, Short Street, and Balaclava Street, had been transferred to McKenna in January that year. Its location at the intersection of major arterial roads was prominent, and well serviced by the tram line which ran along Logan Road. John Hall & Son’s design was an imposing structure to attract attention, and when completed and opened in 1890 it rapidly became a well-known local landmark. The Broadway Hotel was a substantial, three-storey, brick hotel in an elaborate Late-Victorian style, described as
Queen Anne Revival. Its two street facades were highly decorative, featuring polychrome face brick walls with elaborately moulded terracotta dressings, balconies, parapets, a
mansard roof, and an octagonal corner tower with tall, peaked roof. It included a single-storey, rear service wing extending along Short Street with a cast-iron post and lace balustrade verandah facing the street. The wing’s original interior layout and function are not known, but was likely one or two small rooms (kitchen and scullery). It is possible the building included a second rear wing, although its size and functions are not known, and is only confirmed to be here by 1915. McKenna operated the hotel until the end of 1899, when he leased the hotel to a succession of licensees, and he sold it in 1917. An
air-raid shelter was constructed in the rear yard in 1943. The hotel was refurbished in the late-1950s, including altering room layouts, enclosing balconies, cutting new openings in walls, and closing others, building toilets and a cold room, and adding new finishes. Plans of this work show the second rear wing at this time to be a two-storey, brick wing with
hip roof. Its ground floor layout and large fireplace indicate it was possibly an early kitchen and/or laundry and two adjacent, smaller rooms, possibly scullery and storeroom. The first floor, which was at a different level to that of the main block, had a layout and room sizes which were domestic, possibly servants’ or manager’s living rooms. Connecting this wing and the hotel’s main block was a semi-enclosed stair down to the rear yard. The plans also show a two-storey, rear verandah (with cast iron posts at ground level), which ran along the rear of the main block, likely built in 1890. It was demolished as part of the late 1950s work. Further refurbishment work was completed in 1960 and 1962. Also at this time, the hotel’s stables in the rear yard were demolished. In the mid-1980s the hotel underwent a program of refurbishment, alterations, and additions. By this time, the external face brick walls had been painted. In 1997, the hotel passed into new ownership. In July 2010, while renovations were underway, a fire occurred at the hotel causing extensive damage, and the hotel ceased operation. Still closed, a second major fire occurred in the hotel in September 2018, causing greater damage. The 2018 fire attracted considerable public, political and media interest about the building’s future, following a long period of being unoccupied and subject to vandalism. This included community meetings and petitions to both State and local government to protect the building. After the fire, the hotel’s structure was stabilised, and debris cleanup occurred. The air-raid shelter, found to be structurally unsound, and other, more-recent structures were demolished by 2020. In 2022 a further change in ownership occurred. In 2024, the hotel remains vacant and fire damaged. In January 2026, the building was further damaged by fire. == Description ==