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Grenfell Street

(Redirected from Embassy Ballroom)

Grenfell Street (34°55′26″S 138°36′07″E / 34.924°S 138.602°E / -34.924; 138.602) is a major street in the north-east quarter of the Adelaide city centre, South Australia.[2] The street runs west-east from King William Street to East Terrace. Its intersection with Pulteney Street is formed by Hindmarsh Square. On the west side of King William Street, it continues as Currie Street towards West Terrace.

Grenfell Street

South Australia
Grenfell Street, looking east from Gawler Place
Grenfell Street is located in City of Adelaide
West end
West end
East end
East end
Coordinates
General information
TypeStreet
LocationAdelaide city centre
Length1.0 km (0.6 mi)[1]
Opened1837
Major junctions
West endKing William Street
Adelaide
 
East endEast Terrace
Adelaide
Location(s)
LGA(s)City of Adelaide

Naming

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Grenfell Street was named after Pascoe St Leger Grenfell, a Cornish businessman and member of the South Australian Church Society. His significant donation of an acre of land on North Terrace was used for the construction of the Holy Trinity Church — one of the first churches built in the city.[3] Grenfell also donated another 40 acres (16 ha) of country land for the use of the church as glebe lands. This land later became the suburb of Trinity Gardens.

Description

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Corner Grenfell Street & Hindmarsh Square, looking SW
 
Grenfell Street, 1930s

Grenfell Street runs from King William Street to East Terrace. It is one of the intermediate-width streets of the Adelaide grid, at 1+1⁄2 chains (99 ft; 30 m) wide.

On the west side of King William Street, the western continuation of Grenfell Street is Currie Street, named after Raikes Currie, a member of the South Australian Association and South Australian Company.[4]

The section of the street which runs parallel to Rundle Mall (west of Hindmarsh Square) on the northern side features many retail outlets, as well as the southern entrances of many of the arcades, side-streets, and eateries of the mall. The southern side is populated mainly by office buildings, including the Grenfell Centre ("the Black Stump") at no. 25.[5]

A dedicated bus lane runs the whole length of both Grenfell and Currie Streets, limiting private vehicles to one lane for most of its length, and carrying nearly all bus traffic traversing the city in an east–west direction. At the eastern end of Grenfell, a dedicated bus track carries buses across East Terrace into the O-Bahn tunnel under Rymill Park.

The eastern end is occupied on the south side by the Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, an art and cultural museum also used as a venue for the Adelaide Fringe and other events, and on the north side by the East End Markets redevelopment.

Former buildings

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Central Hall/Queen's Hall/Embassy Ballroom

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Central Hall, at no. 102a Grenfell, was built by a Mrs Phillipson, of Glenelg, for the use of the Adelaide German Club (Allgemeiner Deutscher Verein) in 1894, opening in June of that year.[6] It was subsequently used for a variety of community events (many unrelated to the club), for around 20 years. Charles Cawthorne took over the lease and reopened it Queen's Hall on 7 August 1915. Its use turned to performances, mainly concerts, operas, dramas, and fundraisers for World War I, and it also hosted occasional variety shows. Its use as a theatre diminished from 1923, and by 1929 it was operating as a dance hall. The building was partially destroyed by fire on 4 November 1929, and it fell into disuse until it was refurbished and reopened in 1933 as the Embassy Ballroom, which had an Art Deco facade. In the 1950s it was converted into a cinema, first called the Plaza Theatre and renamed Paris Cinema in 1965. It was later demolished and Regent Arcade built on the site.[7][8][9]

Heritage-listed buildings

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Adelaide Electric Supply Co. power station, East Tce, c.1926

Grenfell Street Power Station

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On the corner of Grenfell Street and East Terrace there is the old Grenfell Street Power Station building. Much of the building now houses the Tandanya National Aboriginal Cultural Institute, facing Grenfell Street, which was heritage-listed on the SA Heritage Register in November 1984,[10] while the old converter stations face East Terrace. A "Historic Engineering Plaque" is located on a ground level plinth just east of the north-east corner of the Tandanya building, which was dedicated by the Institution of Engineers, Australia, the Electricity Trust of South Australia and the Adelaide City Council on 6 April 1995.[11]

Pubs

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  • The Producers Hotel (formerly Old Exchange Hotel, Producers Club Hotel, Woodman's Inn), at no. 233-235,[12] was built on the site of the first pub built and licensed in the East End, the Woodman, in 1839.[13][14][15] It was first licensed by John Ragless Jr, and so named because it was the first stop for timber merchants carting timber from "the Tiers" (as the Adelaide Hills were called).[16] In 1900 it was renamed the Electric Light, after the power station. It was rebuilt for the South Australian Brewing Company in Queen Anne style in 1906 as the Producers.[17] It was listed on the SA Heritage Register on 5 April 1984.[18] After the East End markets moved away in 1986, the hotel became the East End Exchange Hotel for a short while before being renamed the Woodman's Inn in the mid-1990s.[17][16] It became a major venue for live music of many genres,[19] under its later name, the Producer's Bar, known simply as "The Producers".[20] It also hosted Adelaide Fringe events, until its closure in 2018.[21] It was functioning mainly as a nightclub in 2022,[22] with a large knife fight reported in March of that year.[23] In 2023 it was known as Friday's Lounge.[24]
  • The Griffins Hotel, built 1886, on the corner of Grenfell Street and Hindmarsh Square (address 40 Hindmarsh Square), is state heritage-listed.[25]
  • Crown and Anchor Hotel, cnr Grenfell/Union (built 1879;[26][27] extensive alterations in 1929;[28][29] local heritage-listing in 2001,[30] facade only[31])
 
E. S. Wigg & Son stationers and adjoining buildings, 1922

Other historic buildings

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Other state heritage-listed buildings in Grenfell Street include:[12]

Other local heritage-listed buildings include:[12]

Transport changes

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In July 2012, dedicated bus lanes were introduced along the full length of Grenfell Street in both directions, in operation from 7am to 7pm each weekday. When operational, taxis, cyclists and emergency vehicles are also able to use the lane, but private vehicles can only travel up to 100 metres (330 ft) in the bus lane.[34][35]

In December 2016, after the O-Bahn extension tunnel was built underneath Rymill Park at the eastern end of the street, buses formerly routed along North Terrace were permanently routed along Grenfell (although they had been temporarily diverted from North Terrace via East Terrace, since construction of the Botanic Line of the Adelaide trams had begun in early October that year).[36] After this, nearly all buses travelling in an east–west direction across the city use Grenfell.[37]

Junction list

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Locationkm[1]miDestinationsNotes
Adelaide city centre00.0King William StreetContinues as Currie Street
0.20.12Gawler Place
0.550.34Pulteney Street
0.750.47Frome Street
1.00.62East TerraceContinues as the bus-only O-Bahn Busway tunnel under the Adelaide Park Lands
1.000 mi = 1.609 km; 1.000 km = 0.621 mi

See also

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  Australian Roads portal

References

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  1. ^ a b "Grenfell Street" (Map). Google Maps. Retrieved 1 June 2022.
  2. ^ 2003 Adelaide Street Directory, 41st Edition. UBD (A Division of Universal Press Pty Ltd). 2003. ISBN 0-7319-1441-4.
  3. ^ "History of Adelaide Through Street Names - Streets Named on the 23rd May, 1837: Grenfell Street". Archived from the original on 19 February 2009. Retrieved 9 November 2009.
  4. ^ "History of Adelaide Through Street Names - Streets Named on the 23rd May, 1837: Currie Street". Archived from the original on 6 May 2009.
  5. ^ "Grenfell Centre". Emporis. 11 May 2015. Archived from the original on 11 May 2015. Retrieved 22 April 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  6. ^ "S.A. Allgemeiner Deutscher Verein". Evening Journal (Adelaide). Vol. XXVI, no. 7381. South Australia. 15 June 1894. p. 3 (Second Edition). Retrieved 10 January 2023 – via National Library of Australia.
  7. ^ "Theatres/Venues 4a: Adelaide". Australian Variety Theatre Archive. 18 April 2014. Retrieved 10 January 2023.
  8. ^ "Queen's Hall in Grenfell Street (1933)" (photo + caption). State Library of South Australia. Retrieved 10 January 2023.
  9. ^ "The Embassy Ballroom, Grenfell Street, 1935" (photo + caption). Flickr. Retrieved 10 January 2023.
  10. ^ "Heritage Places 241-259 Grenfell Street Adelaide". SA Heritage Places Database Search. Retrieved 23 December 2020.
  11. ^ Institution of Engineers, Australia. SA Division. Engineering Heritage Branch (17 July 1996). "Historic Engineering Marker at the Grenfell Power and East Terrace Converter Stations (Issue 2)" (PDF).
  12. ^ a b c "Heritage Places: Search By Keywords - grenfell AND adelaide". SA Heritage Places Database Search. Retrieved 23 December 2020.
  13. ^ "The East End Historic Pub-crawl" (PDF).
  14. ^ "Advertising". Adelaide Chronicle and South Australian Advertiser. Vol. I, no. IV. South Australia. 31 December 1839. p. 1. Retrieved 18 April 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
  15. ^ "Advertising". Southern Australian. Vol. II, no. 43. South Australia. 27 March 1839. p. 4. Retrieved 18 April 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
  16. ^ a b "Woodmans Inn (Former Producers Hotel)" (PDF). City of Adelaide. 1996. The text in this Information Sheet was copied from the Heritage of the City of Adelaide: An Illustrated Guide (1996).
  17. ^ a b "Woodman's Inn/Producers Hotel". Adelaide City Explorer. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  18. ^ "The Producers Hotel (former Old Exchange Hotel, former Producers Club Hotel)". Experience Adelaide. 16 September 2019. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  19. ^ "Producers Hotel". OnlyAdelaide. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  20. ^ Dexter, John (21 April 2016). "A Guide to Adelaide's Pub Heritage". The Adelaide Review. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  21. ^ "Adelaide Fringe at The Producers". Facebook. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  22. ^ Kelsall, Thomas (12 July 2022). "'They're going to complain': Apartments squeeze city music pubs". InDaily. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  23. ^ "Stabbing victim in critical condition as anti-gang police investigate large fight at Adelaide pub". ABC News. 13 March 2022. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  24. ^ "Friday's Lounge". Facebook. Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  25. ^ City of Adelaide. "Griffins Head Hotel" (PDF). Heritage of the City of Adelaide. Retrieved 6 June 2022. The text in this Information Sheet was copied from the City of Adelaide Heritage Study, October 1990, Volume One, part of a review of the City of Adelaide Plan 1986-1991.
  26. ^ "Building Improvements during 1879". South Australian Register. Vol. XLV, no. 10, 338. South Australia. 2 January 1880. p. 5. Retrieved 17 April 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
  27. ^ Stewart, Hannah. "Crown and Anchor Hotel". SA History Hub. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
  28. ^ "Milne, F. Kenneth Collection" (PDF). Architecture Museum, University of South Australia. 6 September 2017. p. 20.
  29. ^ "Money in hotels". The News (Adelaide). Vol. XII, no. 1, 778. South Australia. 27 March 1929. p. 13 (Home edition). Retrieved 17 April 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
  30. ^ "196-198 Grenfell Street (also known as 35-39 Union Street) Adelaide". Experience Adelaide. 16 September 2019. Retrieved 17 April 2024.
  31. ^ "Student accommodation development proposed for Crown & Anchor". The Note. 22 March 2024. Retrieved 17 April 2024.
  32. ^ "Wiggs' Building - 63-69 Grenfell Street Adelaide". City of Adelaide. 19 August 2020. Retrieved 24 December 2020.
  33. ^ City of Adelaide. "Wiggs Building, 63-69 Grenfell Street" (PDF). Heritage of the City of Adelaide.
  34. ^ Installation of bus priority lanes Grenfell Street, Currie Street & East Terrace Department of Planning, Transport & Infrastructure May 2012
  35. ^ Adelaide bus lanes Australian Bus issue 53 September 2012 page 6
  36. ^ Siebert, Bension (8 December 2017). "Hundreds more O-Bahn buses to hit "deteriorating" Grenfell St". InDaily. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
  37. ^ Brennan, Ben (18 December 2017). "Confusion reigns as bus routes change". adelaidenow. Retrieved 22 December 2020.
 
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