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Australia, Building, Coffee, Coffee Palace, Lawson, Lawson's, Matthew Ward, Newcastle, NSW, Zaara Street
Well, this week while visiting a Newcastle Library photo exhibition, ‘ON the BEACH’, I was thrilled to see a photo of the exterior of an establishment called the Newcastle Coffee Palace (a.k.a. Lawson’s Coffee Palace) that used to be on the corner of Zaara Street & (what we now know as) Shortland Esplanade (Ocean Street?), Newcastle. I’d seen the 1910 photo before, maybe on the Library’s photobank (and interior photos, see later on this page), but in closeup I could now see the sign ‘Newcastle Coffee Palace’ on the Zaara Street corner of the building. See photo below of the whole photo with the establishment enlarged and highlighted…
Here is a 2015 Googlemaps pic of the site today:
And the Googlemaps Streetview so you can look around the site:
• Here is a 1910 photo of the interior of the building. The image is large, but I am sure you’ll appreciate the detail Ralph Snowball’s camera captures.
I gather the coffee palaces / houses were places that had accommodation, and served meals including coffee, tea, but not alcohol (as part of the Temperance Movement), but I’ll have to check on this. There was also a coffee palace on Scott Street, next to the Longworth Institute, during the same time.
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© Matthew Ward, 2015
Posted by matthewglennward | Filed under coffee, Newcastle History