Speaker: Warwick Smith, Manager, Reid’s Guest House, Uniting Ballarat
Reid’s guest house provides welfare accommodation for people who are homeless or in housing crisis. We have on average about 44 people living here any given night.
So, this building was originally a coffee palace. A coffee palace was a place that I suppose was the alternative to the bars and pubs and hotels, of which Ballarat had plenty of during the gold rush. So, it was a place where people could come away from the alcohol and, and still have a civilised afternoon or evening out.
Speaker: Wendy Jacobs, Architect and Heritage Consultant
John Reid, who built the original coffee Palace, started as a baker, but he'd obviously branched out into accommodation, catering, weddings. And although this was a coffee palace and for teetotallers, he also owned the provincial hotel across the road for the drinkers, so he really did cover both bases.
The works being undertaken here at Reid’s started because the parapet was in very, very poor condition with the render falling off. It was quite dangerous, and we were lucky enough to get funding through the Living Heritage Grant to rehabilitate the building, then got extra funding to do the interior paint work.
Speaker: Warwick Smith, Manager, Reid’s Guest House, Uniting Ballarat
So, I think the works are really important to the building, not, not only just from a heritage aspect. People that we have staying here face very difficult situations and have had a hard life. To have a building that was looking quite run down and tired added to that feeling of isolation. The hope is that it, it will really lift the spirits of the people that call this place home and give them a sense of pride and belonging.
Speaker: Wendy Jacobs, Architect and Heritage Consultant
Well, our wonderful painters, Mick and Bill are at the moment rehabilitating the artwork in the interior. It's a very highly decorated stair hall. It starts with what's called a monitor roof at the top, which has stained glass in it, uncovering and repairing where it's been damaged, with work over the last 100 odd years and repainting completely the missing parts of the decoration.
Speaker: Warwick Smith, Manager, Reid’s Guest House, Uniting Ballarat
We were quite surprised when we started revealing some of the artwork throughout the foyer. The more we the looked, the more that we, that we found and it was quite exciting to see the amount of detail that had gone into a lot of the work back in the day and have the chance to recreate some of that and restore it to its former glory.
Speaker: Craig Jenkins, Director, S.J. Weir
To be given the opportunity to be able to, to restore this building in the stages as we have done over the, over the last five or six years is really great. We've renovated the front façade. We've replaced the veranda decking, the roofing and obviously we've done quite a lot of work to the rendering of the facade itself. That includes the parapets up on the back of the roof.
For the community, it's just fantastic to be able to drive down Lydiard St and see the restoration of such a beautiful old building. It's great and we just hope that many more opportunities like this in old buildings are available. From a community perspective, it's very pleasing.
Speaker: Wendy Jacobs, Architect and Heritage Consultant
I believe it is important to invest in heritage places because if we don't understand our past, we can't plan our future. It should be a thoughtful process that people should keep what is the best from the past. This is a, a wonderful building. It's still providing accommodation in Ballarat, and it still serves its original purpose. And I believe that keeping part of your past as you walk into the future is an important thing.
Page last updated: 15/03/23