Bay View Hotel

(Random walkies)


(Embiggulate)

Look down into the left hand corner of the picture, between the street sign and the bush. That's Brisbane Water there, and that hill in the distance is Kincumba Mountain. So you can see this pub is close to the water. It is in fact, if you squint between the Armaguard van and the pub you can see a boat at the ferry wharf.

The street in the foreground is Brisbane Water Drive and those cars are stopping at the lights just out of frame on the right. The railway station is to the right of the camera. The Boulevard runs down the longer side of the pub.



Bit closer for some detail. Not close enough I admit but this one's a hard bastard to photograph. It's either half obscured by cars or just a black block with the morning sun rising behind it.

Anyways. It was built in 1929. Look carefully on The Boulevard side and you can see a change in the roofline where the 1929 part of the building ends and the circa 1980s extension starts. That extension is the motel rooms bit as far as I can tell, and the hotel rooms are in the upstairs of the 1929 part.

Can't find it in the NSW Heritage database or the Australian Heritage database but in Strom it's listed as "Heritage Act status ... Sect. 130 23-1-81". The style seems to be Inter War Free Classical (circa 1915 - c. 1940).

The original Bay View Hotel had a view over the bay, hence the name. The bay was Woy Woy Bay. It, the pub not the bay, was on Railway Street where the Deepwater Plaza extension is now, opposite the railway line at the corner of Charlton Street. It was a lovely 2 storey place and it opened there in 1907. It was right opposite the old railway station. The new hotel was built after the new railway station was built.

The old building became the Nielsen Slipper Factory then, in 1957, Osti Knitting Industries turned it into temporary accommodation. The decorative bits on the verandas were taken off and the verandas closed in with fibro (asbestos sheeting).

This was a cruel thing to happen to a lovely old building. It's remembered fondly by those who knew it in its heyday but there's no known photos of it. (If you've got a photo of the old Bay View email it to me at spikebotster at gmail dot com and I'll post it on here with your name on it, or you can take it to Librarian Geoff at Gosford Library.)

I'm not sure yet when the old pub was pulled down. When I moved to Woy Woy that Deepwater extension was an empty block being used as a carpark by the Deepwater employees.

That's it from me today. I'm off for my afternoon nap.