This collection includes selected items relating to coffee palaces and outdoor portable coffee stalls (carts) in Sydney.
Sydneysiders have enjoyed drinking coffee since the early colony. The Council had a role in regulating coffee stalls and in development and building of coffee establishments.
The earliest request for a coffee stall located in the City Archives is a petition to vend coffee at the George Street Markets in 1844.
In the late 19th century (from the 1870's) 'coffee palaces' were often grand residential hotels that did not serve alcohol. They were popular during the temperance movement and sometimes called 'temperance hotels'.
Some of the Sydney coffee palaces include:
- Grand Central Coffee Palace, in the Imperial Arcade in Pitt Street and in Clarence Street Sydney (1889)
- Great Western Coffee Palace in Hay and Sussex Streets Haymarket, opposite what is now Paddy's Markets, constructed in 1913
- Sydney Coffee Palace, Sir John Young Crescent (opposite the Domain)
- Sydney Coffee Palace, Woolloomooloo
- Crescent Coffee Palace, Haymarket
- Town Hall Coffee Palace, George Street Sydney
- London Coffee Palace, Hunter Street Sydney
- North Sydney Coffee Palace, Bridge and George Streets Sydney
- North Queensland Coffee Palace, George Street Sydney
- Ellis Coffee Palace, King Street Sydney
- Federal Coffee Palace, Oxford Street Sydney.
After the depression of the the late 1890s some coffee palaces were converted into ordinary hotels or converted for different uses. The name continued to be used by some small residential hotels into the early twentieth century.
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