The Yarra Coffee Palace, Stephens Street, Yarraville
By Sean Reynolds
The Yarra Coffee Palace, a 1914 icon in Yarraville, exudes charm with its brick facade, vintage tobacco advertisements, and a grand hand-painted Coffee Palace sign.
Coffee palaces, born from the temperance movement of the 1880s, were magnificent alcohol-free hotels striving to curb drinking habits.
This trend ended in the 1893 depression, which lead to a rise in alcohol consumption. Post-World War I, the term ‘coffee palace’ returned with smaller residential hotels, a far cry from the grand ones built three decades prior.
In 1920, the building housed a confectionery, followed by Mrs. Elizabeth C. Gill’s Coffee Palace and tea rooms. During the Great Depression of 1929, it served as a soup kitchen. Edmund Gill, Elizabeth’s husband, bought the adjacent shop and transformed both into a grocery.
Around 1950, the Coffee Palace was abandoned and left to decay until the Romita family revitalised it in 1961 as a milk bar.
Today, both structures stand as residences, embodying a rich slice of the west side’s history.
If you’d like to read more stories about Melbourne’s past, follow me on Instagram @melbourne_ghostsigns.
