The Esplanade Hotel, commonly known locally as "The Espy", is a hotel and music venue in the inner bayside suburb of St Kilda, in the city of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Built in 1878, it overlooks Port Phillip from the Upper Esplanade. It is famed for its long history of live music, and served as the filming location for the live music trivia program Rockwiz.
The hotel was built in 1878[2] and remains one of the earliest, largest and most prominent 19th-century resort hotels in Victoria. Originally intended to be three large terraces, the building was altered to become a hotel during construction, and became one of the premier hotels in Melbourne outside the city. The Esplanade Hotel provided rooms overlooking Port Phillip Bay, at a time when St Kilda was both a suburb of the wealthy, and the preferred place to partake of the waters in one of the many sea-bath establishments for both Melburnians and visitors.
A large dining room (later known as the Gershwin Room) in the rear wing was redecorated in Art Nouveau style in c1910.
In 1921 the hotel changed hands to become Carlyon’s Esplanade Hotel,[3] and alterations were made changing it from exclusive residential use for the wealthy to incorporate entertainment for the middle classes. A ground level extension created a much larger lounge bar, and a grand staircase and entry was added. The "Eastern Tent Ballroom" was constructed to the rear of the site, and in the early 1920s became an important jazz and dance venue, at a time when the St Kilda foreshore area was one of the main entertainment districts in Melbourne, with numerous dance halls, cinemas, baths, hotels and an ice rink. It closed in 1925, and in 1929 the ballroom was rebuilt as the Spanish style Baymor Court flats.[4]
Col Jackson took on the lease in 1967 and heralded a new era in music at The Espy. In the 1970s the Gershwin Room was turned into a disco, complete with flashing Saturday Night Fever-style dance floor, and later hosted live bands, as did the front bar, dubbed the Nimrod Room. From the 70s and through the 1980s and 90s, live music on up to three stages was an almost every night occurrence, as the Espy became one of the major venues of Melbourne's vibrant live music scene.[3] By the 1980s, the upper floor guest rooms had been abandoned, and by the 1990s the Baymor Court flats were unused as well. The Esplanade Hotel was classified by the National Trust of Australia in October 1990.[5]
The hotel was bought by Carlton and United Breweries in 1995 and then sold to Becton Corporation in 1997 with plans to develop a large residential and retail complex on the site. Becton's proposal for a 35 storey residential complex behind a partly retained hotel resulted in 9,000 residents registering objections and the trade union movement threatening to boycott construction if the pub was demolished. Community opposition supported the Espy's role in Melbourne culture and independent music scene. The eventual compromise was a lower 10 storey apartment building to the rear and side replacing rear wings, a yard, the Baymor Court flats and the bottle shop, separate from the main part of the hotel building. [6]
In 2001, Becton put out to tender the sale of a 200 year lease for the separated Espy Hotel. The community based Lewis/Comey/Esplanade Alliance bid was pipped by former nightclub operators Paul Adamo and Vince Sofo (who previously owned the popular Chevron nightclub in Chapel Street). Following some refurbishment the Gershwin Room at the rear reopened for live bands in 2004 and became home for the SBS television show Rockwiz. In 2006 the apartment development, designed by Fender Katsalidis, was completed. Adamo and Sofo attempted to sell the lease in early 2014, without success. They closed the hotel suddenly on 17 May 2015, with the stated intention of refurbishment, but no work happened, with only the Gershwin Room used occasionally for special gigs.
In May 2017, The Espy was sold yet again, to Melbourne-based hospitality group Sand Hill Road, who have operated and redeveloped licensed venues since 2000. After an extensive renovation, a transformed Espy reopened in November 2018,[7][8] with three live music or performance stages, numerous bars and restaurants, finally renovating and reusing all four floors, and the basement.[9]
In August 2022, The Espy was sold to KKR, a US-based private equity company. According to a report in The Australian on 3 Aug 2022 "The famed US company, which is the backer of local outfit Australian Venue Co. that has taken over the iconic venue, has been chasing it since before the pandemic struck.
The KKR-backed company has just finalised a deal to acquire Espy owner the Sand Hill Road pub group for about $100m."[10]
The Esplanade Hotel is reputed to be the longest continuously running live music venue in Australia.[11] In May 1995, Paul Kelly recorded tracks for his album, Live at the Continental and the Esplanade (1996), in the hotel's Gershwin Room.[12] Since 2005, the SBS music quiz show RocKwiz has been filmed in the same room. Show host Julia Zemiro used to work at the hotel as a waitress.
St Kilda is an inner seaside suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 6 km south-east of the Melbourne central business district, located within the City of Port Phillip local government area. St Kilda recorded a population of 19,490 at the 2021 census.
Live at the Continental and the Esplanade is a live album by Australian rock musician, Paul Kelly, which was originally available, from late 1995, by mail order only from Mushroom Records' White Records Label in Australia. It had been recorded from two performances at the Continental Hotel in Prahran and one performance at the Esplanade Hotel in St Kilda, both in Melbourne. By June 1996 the album was available in Australian stores on Mushroom Records and, on 23 July, it was issued by Vanguard Records in the United States.
Tourism is a significant industry in the state of Victoria, Australia. The country's second most-populous city, Melbourne was visited by 2.7 million international overnight visitors and 9.3 million domestic overnight visitors during the year ending December 2017.
Brian Nankervis is an Australian writer, actor, radio host, television producer and comedian. He is one of the co-creators of the music quiz show, RocKwiz and co-hosts The Friday Revue with Jacinta Parsons on ABC Radio.
RocKwiz is an Australian television live music trivia quiz show, focused on rock music and featuring different guest artist musicians who perform live in each episode. The show was co-created by Brian Nankervis, Peter Bain-Hogg, and Ken Connor. It was originally broadcast on SBS and premiered in 2005 also on Foxtel's Max but now airs on Foxtel. The 14th season, which was the final season aired by SBS, premiered on 7 May 2016. Season 14 consisted of 7 episodes, recorded between February and April 2016, with the theme "RocKwiz Salutes The Legends". The final episode aired on 25 June 2016. The series won the 2007 AACTA Award for Best Light Entertainment Television Series and was nominated in the same category three times, it was also nominated for a Helpmann Award. On February 3, 2019 it was announced that SBS would no longer be commissioning any more TV episodes although the live touring shows would continue. In 2023, a new series was commissioned by Foxtel, with some changes to the format including a focus on more recent music and filming in a studio.
Dr. Kate Shaw is an Australian academic, planning activist and commentator, currently serving as a research fellow at the University of Melbourne.
The Palace Theatre was an entertainment venue located in Melbourne, Australia. First built for live theatre in 1912, it was also used as a cinema and for live music. It was demolished except for its facade in 2020 after much community opposition, to be replaced by a hotel.
Fitzroy Street is the major thoroughfare of the beachside Melbourne suburb of St Kilda. Its fortunes have risen and fallen along with that of St Kilda itself, from wealthy residential district to a popular working and middle class beachside entertainment district, to cheap and seedy, and popular again in the late 20th century. In recent years Fitzroy Street itself has gone from a popular restaurant strip to the situation in 2017 where only a few restaurants remain amongst kebab shops and convenience stores catering the backpackers and many empty shopfronts. It is named after Charles Augustus FitzRoy, Governor of New South Wales in 1842 when St Kilda was first subdivided.
A Music Victoria study finds Melbourne hosts 62,000 live concerts annually, making it one of the live music capitals of the world. Victoria is host to more than three times the live performance national average, making it the live music capital of the country. Melbourne is host to more music venues per capita than Austin, Texas.
The Crystal Ballroom was a music venue that opened in 1978 in St Kilda, an inner suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Located within the George Hotel on Fitzroy Street, it has often been referred to as the epicentre of Melbourne's post-punk movement, showcasing groups such as The Birthday Party, Dead Can Dance and Crime and the City Solution, as well as being a mainstay of the Little Band scene.
David Roland Joseph O'Brien is an Australian politician who represented the National Party in the Victorian Legislative Council.
Mark Boerebach is an Australian savant, able to recall Australian music chart top hits from the 1970s and 1980s.
Edgewater Towers is a high rise apartment block located in the suburb of St Kilda in Melbourne, Australia. The building, completed in 1961, was Melbourne's first, high rise residential apartment block and the tallest in Victoria until Domain Park Flats was completed in 1962. The building was designed by émigré architect Mordechai Benshemesh who designed many multi-storey buildings in St Kilda and Elwood. Edgewater Towers is considered to be Benshemesh's most iconic design. Edgewater Towers stands at 44 m tall (architectural), 39 m tall, and 13 storeys tall.
The St. Moritz Ice Rink was a popular ice rink housed in a grand venue on The Esplanade, St. Kilda, Victoria, which operated between 1939–1981. As one of only two ice rinks in Melbourne in the 40s and 50s, it played a central role to the sport of ice hockey in Australia. Closed in 1982, it soon suffered a major fire and was then demolished, an event later seen as a major blow to the heritage of St Kilda.
Melbourne Ska Orchestra are an ARIA Award-winning Australian ska band formed in 2003 in Melbourne. The group has up to 34 members, and is led by bandleader Nicky Bomba, formerly of the John Butler Trio. The band are signed to FOUR FOUR, an imprint of ABC Music.
Australian Venue Co. (AVC), is a hospitality company in Australia that owns and operates over 200 venues across the country.
References
↑ "MEMORANDA". The Telegraph, St Kilda, Prahran and South Yarra Guardian. No.831. Victoria, Australia. 12 January 1878. p.3. Retrieved 16 February 2017– via National Library of Australia., ...The handsome new hotel lately erected on the St. Kilda Esplanade, and called the Esplanade Hotel, was formally opened on Monday. It is erected on the site of the old Criterion Hotel...
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